ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► You're just starting in without Casey huh?

00:00:02 ◼   ► OK he's rebooting.

00:00:04 ◼   ► He said momentarily, I mean that was a few minutes ago.

00:00:07 ◼   ► You know how long it takes to reboot.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Takes a while.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Not that long.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Not on my shiny new Mac Pro.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Mmhmm.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Hi. Hello. Sorry.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Rebooting your slow computer?

00:00:17 ◼   ► Why are you going to be like that?

00:00:19 ◼   ► It's faster than John's.

00:00:20 ◼   ► That's probably true.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I don't have to reboot.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm already running.

00:00:23 ◼   ► No time I rebooted for system updates.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I didn't have to I just had this sneaking suspicion that I needed to the camp

00:00:30 ◼   ► I have empathy for the machine John you've got that reboot feeling

00:00:34 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Oh my god

00:00:36 ◼   ► That's a what is it?

00:00:38 ◼   ► It was top gun wasn't it that's not where that song is from but yes that movie did feature that song

00:00:43 ◼   ► Take me home or lose me forever John, Syracuse. Oh

00:00:46 ◼   ► You know, uh, fun fact days of thunder was the better movie between the two of them because of the same movie

00:00:55 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure they're not days of Thunder was the better one. Why why do you think that because well a everyone is going to tell me

00:01:02 ◼   ► I'm wrong and they're probably right, but I don't care because planes are not as fun as cars what I

00:01:07 ◼   ► Was waiting for a reason like I figured you know you had some no no reasonable foundation for your opinion, but no no

00:01:15 ◼   ► That's not let's talk about vinyl after this high-definition vinyl. Yeah, I love I love that story so much like they're like

00:01:21 ◼   ► if only there were some other, you know, round music medium that was longer than a vinyl

00:01:27 ◼   ► record and could allow for more precise audio.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Right, right, right.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Yeah, there might be.

00:01:31 ◼   ► So I read it, I thought it was going to be like high-definition vinyl, but instead it

00:01:36 ◼   ► seemed like it was just a way to more precisely make vinyl, but everything else about it was

00:01:41 ◼   ► the same, like it wasn't higher definition.

00:01:43 ◼   ► It was like, if we could really carefully carve grooves in vinyl, like more carefully

00:01:49 ◼   ► than usual.

00:01:50 ◼   ► I was like, "All right, I guess. I mean, sure, but it's not... Oh, God. I don't understand."

00:01:56 ◼   ► I thought it was going to be a higher density or it was going to do... I was kind of imagining

00:02:02 ◼   ► that it would make little pits for ones and zeros. It would be vinyl, but CDs on vinyl,

00:02:06 ◼   ► you know what I mean? There's lots of things you could do to make actual high-definition vinyl,

00:02:11 ◼   ► but instead they're just more carefully carving grooves in vinyl.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been sent that a couple times already. I guess things like, as somebody who has

00:02:20 ◼   ► now seen all the sides of this,

00:02:22 ◼   ► the appeal of vinyl has nothing to do with

00:02:25 ◼   ► its sound quality or fidelity or dynamic range

00:02:29 ◼   ► or any of the things they're proposing to increase.

00:02:33 ◼   ► If you want those things, you shouldn't be using vinyl at all.

00:02:38 ◼   ► You should be using digital sources.

00:02:41 ◼   ► This is just crazy to me.

00:02:44 ◼   ► - Anyway, we should start with follow-up.

00:02:45 ◼   ► iOS 11.3 has a new battery throttling notification, which we were made aware of sometime in the

00:02:52 ◼   ► last week.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Stephen Devine was the first that I noticed to send us an image.

00:02:56 ◼   ► It reads as follows, "This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery

00:03:01 ◼   ► was unable to deliver the necessary peak power.

00:03:04 ◼   ► Performance management has been applied to help prevent this from happening again."

00:03:07 ◼   ► Like a passive voice, "Performance management has been applied."

00:03:10 ◼   ► Who applied it?

00:03:11 ◼   ► What happened now?

00:03:12 ◼   ► The iPhone experienced an unexpected shutdown.

00:03:14 ◼   ► and it experienced it.

00:03:15 ◼   ► - Well, that is kind of true.

00:03:17 ◼   ► The phone did, at least it didn't blame you.

00:03:19 ◼   ► There is actually no actor in that situation.

00:03:21 ◼   ► The phone did experience something.

00:03:22 ◼   ► - You shut down your iPhone because of a problem.

00:03:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:26 ◼   ► No, I'm very happy that they are notifying the user

00:03:31 ◼   ► when battery throttling happens.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Big picture wise, that's good.

00:03:36 ◼   ► They should have been doing this all along

00:03:38 ◼   ► and that would have made the problem a lot less severe.

00:03:40 ◼   ► I don't think the wording they've chosen here

00:03:43 ◼   ► is particularly helpful or even honest,

00:03:46 ◼   ► performance management has been applied.

00:03:51 ◼   ► I don't think a lot of people are going to correctly know

00:03:53 ◼   ► that that means your phone will now be slowed down.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Like that's a pretty big difference

00:03:58 ◼   ► than performance management has been applied.

00:04:02 ◼   ► That is a dark pattern euphemism that is intentionally

00:04:06 ◼   ► written to mask the truth, to confuse and kinda hide

00:04:12 ◼   ► what's actually going on in this huge paragraph that they know most people are not going to

00:04:17 ◼   ► read and if they do read it they're not really going to understand what it's really doing.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I wish they would have been a little more clear in the language but at least they're

00:04:24 ◼   ► undifying people. I just wish they were undefined in a more honest way.

00:04:29 ◼   ► >> And they don't offer any remedies. Like the dialogue should say, "Okay, like, here's

00:04:33 ◼   ► what happened and what? Is there anything I can do about it?" Actually, in this case

00:04:36 ◼   ► there is. What you can do about it is get a new battery for your phone, right?

00:04:39 ◼   ► >> Right, exactly.

00:04:40 ◼   ► something like it's not even as far as I can tell it's not even a place like oh

00:04:43 ◼   ► you know tap here for more information like if a user is interested enough in

00:04:47 ◼   ► this very confusing vague like you could mean a lot of different things and you

00:04:51 ◼   ► say I want to know more because it sounds like something bad might have

00:04:54 ◼   ► happened to my phone presumably they knew something bad happened to the phone

00:04:56 ◼   ► because they were using it two seconds ago and then the screen went black and

00:04:59 ◼   ► had to wait for it to reboot right so if that happened to me and then my phone

00:05:03 ◼   ► came back and it said this I would be like well what what can I do about that

00:05:07 ◼   ► And Apple has answers, they're easy answers.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Hey, go get a new battery.

00:05:11 ◼   ► But they don't offer that in this dialogue anyway.

00:05:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, they could be a little more,

00:05:16 ◼   ► they could say like, your battery can no longer

00:05:19 ◼   ► run the phone at full speed.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Like that is more direct.

00:05:23 ◼   ► That is telling them like, your phone won't be slow,

00:05:26 ◼   ► it's the battery's fault, it's something that you can

00:05:28 ◼   ► therefore have some control over.

00:05:30 ◼   ► You need to replace the battery.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Using language that is more honest and accountable,

00:05:37 ◼   ► I think would do a lot of good here.

00:05:39 ◼   ► The whole point of this notification

00:05:42 ◼   ► is to fix the problem they had before,

00:05:44 ◼   ► which is they were slowing down people's phones

00:05:47 ◼   ► without telling them.

00:05:48 ◼   ► This kind of sort of fixes that,

00:05:51 ◼   ► but if the people don't really know what's going on,

00:05:54 ◼   ► and they later find out, oh, my phone has been slowed down

00:05:58 ◼   ► by Apple because of this thing,

00:06:00 ◼   ► I don't think they're gonna feel better, necessarily,

00:06:03 ◼   ► than they would if they weren't told at all,

00:06:05 ◼   ► because if this is all they saw,

00:06:07 ◼   ► and they didn't really understand what was going on,

00:06:09 ◼   ► then they effectively weren't told at all.

00:06:10 ◼   ► So it doesn't really solve the problem.

00:06:13 ◼   ► - I'm glad that they have a notification.

00:06:14 ◼   ► I think you nailed it, Marco, that, you know,

00:06:17 ◼   ► it may not be perfect, there's certainly, you know,

00:06:19 ◼   ► issues that we can and just have taken with it,

00:06:21 ◼   ► but I do think that telling the user

00:06:22 ◼   ► what the hell is going on is a good first step,

00:06:25 ◼   ► and I welcome this improvement.

00:06:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you need to subtract some of the California

00:06:29 ◼   ► from this dialogue and apply a little bit

00:06:30 ◼   ► of East Coast to it.

00:06:31 ◼   ► - Good friggin' luck, my friend.

00:06:34 ◼   ► I agree with you, but good luck.

00:06:36 ◼   ► I mean, how can you expect people who don't live in the real world to communicate with

00:06:40 ◼   ► people who live in the real world?

00:06:42 ◼   ► Worded by Apple in California.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Oh, well done.

00:06:48 ◼   ► All right, moving on.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Mac OS, this is actually breaking news, and I mean that genuinely.

00:06:54 ◼   ► This is just breaking in the last, like, hour or two.

00:06:57 ◼   ► So we're recording this in the evening of April 11th on Wednesday night, and apparently

00:07:02 ◼   ► A few people are reporting all at the same moment that Mac OS 10.13.4 is now going to

00:07:10 ◼   ► warn users about 32-bit apps.

00:07:12 ◼   ► This is a quote from Jason Snell, "Apple's long transition away from 32-bit software

00:07:17 ◼   ► takes another step beginning April 12.

00:07:19 ◼   ► When the clock strikes switching hour local time, Macs running Mac OS 10.13.4 will display

00:07:24 ◼   ► a warning the first time any non-Apple app that isn't 64-bit compliant is opened."

00:07:30 ◼   ► interesting.

00:07:31 ◼   ► - I mean this isn't that surprising.

00:07:34 ◼   ► They're clearly, you know, they have not been that secretive

00:07:38 ◼   ► that 32-bit support is on its way out.

00:07:40 ◼   ► This is, it's just like what they did on iOS.

00:07:42 ◼   ► When iOS 11, I believe, was the one that dropped, right?

00:07:46 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:07:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so like for iOS 10, like 10.4, whatever,

00:07:50 ◼   ► whatever the last version of 10 was,

00:07:52 ◼   ► they started showing this alert then,

00:07:53 ◼   ► and you know, over iOS apps,

00:07:55 ◼   ► and they added a little section in settings

00:07:57 ◼   ► where you could see which of your apps was 32-bit.

00:07:59 ◼   ► So that's nice, you can do this.

00:08:01 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be more disruptive on the Mac,

00:08:04 ◼   ► like we mentioned briefly last week.

00:08:06 ◼   ► But, you know, telling users what's about to happen

00:08:09 ◼   ► before it happens in, you know, six months to a year,

00:08:12 ◼   ► whenever it would be, is certainly a good thing.

00:08:14 ◼   ► This dialogue, I think, is better worded.

00:08:17 ◼   ► This one actually tells you what the problem is.

00:08:20 ◼   ► - I don't know, I've always found these apps,

00:08:21 ◼   ► like when the one happened on 10 point whatever,

00:08:24 ◼   ► nobody I knew who didn't already know

00:08:27 ◼   ► where the dialogue is about, guessed correctly from the thing. And I don't know how they

00:08:31 ◼   ► should word it because people don't care about 32 versus 64, but what it actually says is

00:08:35 ◼   ► — so it's a two-line dialogue, it's got the bold line and then the longer, non-bold

00:08:39 ◼   ► sentence underneath it. It says, "Whatever the application name is not optimized for

00:08:43 ◼   ► your Mac." Now —

00:08:44 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, this actually is a terrible dialogue now that I think about it.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Now, "is not optimized for your Mac," that's not really true. Like, I know what they're

00:08:51 ◼   ► trying to get at, but it makes it seem like the same app that was running fine yesterday

00:08:55 ◼   ► now somehow like because people read optimized and think it means slower or something and

00:08:59 ◼   ► it's the same speed as it was yesterday right and then the other part says this app needs

00:09:03 ◼   ► to be updated by its developer to improve compatibility that's that's closer to true

00:09:07 ◼   ► because the app does what the remedy is developer of the app needs to do something like you

00:09:12 ◼   ► user can't do anything about this the developer needs to do it and why does it need to be

00:09:16 ◼   ► updated to improve compatibility compatibility with what compatibility with an os that apple

00:09:20 ◼   ► is going to release sometime in the semi-near future that's what the competitive they don't

00:09:24 ◼   ► Don't say that, but that's what it's about.

00:09:26 ◼   ► So it's tough to word this one, I kinda get that.

00:09:28 ◼   ► - That's actually really bad.

00:09:30 ◼   ► So like, you know, you're right,

00:09:32 ◼   ► not optimized means it might be slow,

00:09:34 ◼   ► which is very different from it's going to stop working

00:09:37 ◼   ► in six months if you update your Mac OS.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And when the iOS dialogue came out,

00:09:40 ◼   ► if I remember correctly, I think it's something

00:09:43 ◼   ► on the lines of that it won't work in future versions

00:09:46 ◼   ► of iOS or in a future version of iOS.

00:09:48 ◼   ► But this, like, to improve compatibility,

00:09:51 ◼   ► that's pretty euphemistic too.

00:09:53 ◼   ► It's like, what they should say is,

00:09:56 ◼   ► this app needs to be updated by its developer

00:09:58 ◼   ► to work on a future version of Mac OS.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Something like that that's even a little more vague

00:10:03 ◼   ► about the timeline, but just to say,

00:10:06 ◼   ► improved compatibility doesn't mean anything,

00:10:08 ◼   ► not optimized means it'll run slowly.

00:10:11 ◼   ► The truth here is this is going to stop working

00:10:13 ◼   ► completely soon.

00:10:15 ◼   ► - And the iOS 11 dialog said, app name needs to be updated,

00:10:19 ◼   ► which I think is better than app name,

00:10:21 ◼   ► what does the product field say?

00:10:22 ◼   ► - Is not optimized?

00:10:22 ◼   ► not optimized, but it needs to be updated, it's much more clear.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And then the subtext was, the developer of this app needs to update it to work with iOS

00:10:29 ◼   ► 11.

00:10:30 ◼   ► So not only was it clear that the reason it needs to be updated is so it will work with

00:10:33 ◼   ► like a future OS, but it tells you the name, iOS 11.

00:10:36 ◼   ► So yeah, the iOS dialog was definitely better.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Yeah, that is perfect.

00:10:39 ◼   ► All right, before we move on, so the dialog has buttons.

00:10:43 ◼   ► It has an OK button, which is just like, OK, whatever, nothing happens.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Your app will launch then, by the way.

00:10:48 ◼   ► It doesn't stop your app from launching, it just shows this the first time you launch

00:10:50 ◼   ► and if you say "okay" it just launches and it's just like it was the day before this

00:10:53 ◼   ► dialog appeared.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And there's a "learn more" button, and the "learn more" button takes you to Apple's

00:10:59 ◼   ► Knowledge Base article about this, which is pretty good, and it explains what's going

00:11:03 ◼   ► on in more detail in the dialog, obviously, which, by the way, this is, you know, the

00:11:07 ◼   ► iOS thing lacks this, there's no place to get more information.

00:11:11 ◼   ► As far as I can tell, I don't know, I should try to get that to come up and tap it or something.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Anyway, the part that stuck out to me in this Knowledge Base article is when it gets to

00:11:20 ◼   ► the point where it explains to you, like, you can't do anything about this, developer

00:11:24 ◼   ► needs to update it, this is why, blah blah blah.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Near the end, there's a section that says, "How do I get in touch with the app developer?"

00:11:31 ◼   ► Which I think is a good question.

00:11:33 ◼   ► So you're telling me, you know, people see this dialogue and they say the developer needs

00:11:36 ◼   ► to update it, and they're like, "Developer?

00:11:38 ◼   ► Like I don't, do I even know what that is?

00:11:40 ◼   ► Let alone who it is?

00:11:41 ◼   ► How would I find the developer of this app?"

00:11:44 ◼   ► And if I was tasked with writing this, I would find myself writing like seven paragraphs

00:11:52 ◼   ► about like, "Well…"

00:11:55 ◼   ► So sometimes it's not an individual, sometimes it's a company, sometimes the company that

00:11:59 ◼   ► used to make the application is gone.

00:12:01 ◼   ► How would you find the person?

00:12:02 ◼   ► Maybe they've moved on, maybe they don't have that job anymore, maybe no one is maintaining

00:12:05 ◼   ► this software.

00:12:07 ◼   ► There's no 100% sure way to find the person who wrote this, but of course they can't

00:12:13 ◼   ► that like they're not going to go on for 20 pages. So they have a very short bit of information

00:12:18 ◼   ► that like I don't know I can't think of much better but this seems bad to me. The easiest

00:12:23 ◼   ► way to contact a developer is to look them up on the web. To find the name of the developer

00:12:29 ◼   ► of an app, open the app, click the app name in the menu bar and choose about. So they

00:12:32 ◼   ► send you to the about. It's two sentences right? The first one says look them up on

00:12:35 ◼   ► the web. What if the developer is John Smith? Look them up on the web? The about box maybe

00:12:41 ◼   ► Maybe it will have a link to their website, but maybe it will just have a name.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Or maybe it will just say, "My cool software company incorporated 2010."

00:12:50 ◼   ► That's really destroying people into the deep end.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, do a Google search.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Figure it out.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Maybe you'll find somebody.

00:12:57 ◼   ► This is going to cause people with the same name as 32-bit app developers to get a lot

00:13:02 ◼   ► of bad email.

00:13:03 ◼   ► My favorite part of this entire page is the very first sentence in the body text.

00:13:07 ◼   ► State of the art technology is what makes a Mac a Mac.

00:13:12 ◼   ► - That was written years ago though.

00:13:13 ◼   ► I haven't updated this knowledge base article

00:13:15 ◼   ► in a long time. - Yeah, I was gonna say,

00:13:16 ◼   ► like, look at the Macs that are for sale today

00:13:18 ◼   ► and tell me which of them have state of the art technology.

00:13:21 ◼   ► All of the Macs that are for sale,

00:13:22 ◼   ► not just the most recent models.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Let's see, does the MacBook Air

00:13:27 ◼   ► have state of the art technology?

00:13:28 ◼   ► How about the Mac Mini?

00:13:29 ◼   ► - It is still a product in their lineup.

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00:15:49 ◼   ► dash for my Audi S5. It not only went in the gap but also had adhesive. I was hesitant

00:15:55 ◼   ► but gave in. And I lost my desktop. Hello, sorry, things are happening on my computer.

00:16:00 ◼   ► Where the f*** did that go?

00:16:01 ◼   ► While you were reading, did the window disappear out from under your eyeballs?

00:16:05 ◼   ► Well, because I was opening a new window before I started reading all this, and then it opened,

00:16:12 ◼   ► and then things disappeared.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Wow, your computer is slow.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Oh, would you stop? God, you're so mean to me.

00:16:18 ◼   ► You were opening a window, then you had time to read two sentences, then the window finally

00:16:21 ◼   ► opened?

00:16:22 ◼   ► VNC window leave me alone. Now. Let me reboot this whole thing

00:16:25 ◼   ► What are you using VNC for what are you remotely controlling because I'm remotely controlling the laptop

00:16:32 ◼   ► That's sitting like two two inches away from me because I am trying to

00:16:35 ◼   ► To look at something for work real quick, so I don't have to worry about it

00:16:39 ◼   ► Are you doing air traffic control during this podcast? What's going on? You trying to land planes at Dallas?

00:16:43 ◼   ► We aren't talking about the Mac Pro yet, you can't like be paying your bills and stuff. Yeah, I know I know I know

00:16:50 ◼   ► No, we're getting there, all right.

00:16:51 ◼   ► So let me just reboot this whole damn thing.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Sean Harding writes, I'm rebooting,

00:16:56 ◼   ► not literally rebooting.

00:16:57 ◼   ► - Oh, the segment.

00:16:58 ◼   ► - He's trying to keep that out of the show,

00:16:59 ◼   ► but I'm pretty sure it's going in.

00:17:01 ◼   ► - No, it's not going in, please no.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Sean Harding writes, I had one of those ProClip mounts

00:17:05 ◼   ► that went into a gap in the dash for my Audi S5.

00:17:09 ◼   ► It not only went in the gap, but it also had adhesive.

00:17:11 ◼   ► I was hesitant, but gave in.

00:17:12 ◼   ► And now I have a big gap in the trim

00:17:14 ◼   ► and adhesive residue, two thumbs down.

00:17:17 ◼   ► - So the ProClip mounts that I was talking about last week,

00:17:19 ◼   ► that go in your car, they're made for each individual

00:17:21 ◼   ► car model, the design of certain dashboards and stuff,

00:17:25 ◼   ► certain ones are gonna be easier or harder to affix

00:17:28 ◼   ► something very securely to than others.

00:17:30 ◼   ► I lucked out in that mine just uses the air vent

00:17:34 ◼   ► and just kinda uses a pressure fit inside the air vent,

00:17:36 ◼   ► top and bottom, so that it doesn't leave anything behind

00:17:39 ◼   ► and there's no permanent dash damage by it.

00:17:42 ◼   ► But if your car is one where it has to do something

00:17:44 ◼   ► a little more aggressive, then that makes sense

00:17:47 ◼   ► to have that be a problem for you.

00:17:51 ◼   ► It isn't a problem for me.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Also, if it's a lease, maybe you don't want to mess with the dash,

00:17:55 ◼   ► because who knows what they'll say about that when you try to give it back.

00:17:58 ◼   ► The thing about the vent ones that some people wrote in about

00:18:02 ◼   ► is they're like, oh, isn't it bad to keep your phone there

00:18:05 ◼   ► like in the winter with the heat blowing out of the vent on it?

00:18:07 ◼   ► And I just assume that every car has that little dial or whatever

00:18:10 ◼   ► that lets you turn off the vent.

00:18:12 ◼   ► And I would suggest that if you--

00:18:14 ◼   ► in the winter, if you have your phone in a vent clip,

00:18:17 ◼   ► turn the vent behind the phone off so heat isn't constantly blowing in the back of

00:18:20 ◼   ► your phone because that's terrible.

00:18:21 ◼   ► In the summer, air conditioning blowing in the back, that's probably great because

00:18:24 ◼   ► it gets pretty hot in the car with the sun beating down on your phone, so that'll probably

00:18:28 ◼   ► even out.

00:18:29 ◼   ► But if you have no dial because your car is a weird super modern thing where there's

00:18:35 ◼   ► no way to control the air vents except for a tiny dot in the middle of a giant field

00:18:40 ◼   ► that you drag around as a vague way to suggest to the car where air might come out.

00:18:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, that sounds pretty cool to be honest.

00:18:47 ◼   ► I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds pretty cool.

00:18:48 ◼   ► - Do yours doesn't have that?

00:18:49 ◼   ► I thought that was on all of those tests.

00:18:50 ◼   ► - No, it's only the Model 3,

00:18:52 ◼   ► which I haven't seen in real life yet.

00:18:53 ◼   ► - Well, it's like if you just wanna turn off the vent

00:18:55 ◼   ► that your phone is attached to though,

00:18:57 ◼   ► I'm not sure how you can do that

00:18:57 ◼   ► by dragging a puck around a little ice hockey rink.

00:18:59 ◼   ► - I actually, as far as I know,

00:19:01 ◼   ► I don't think I can turn off a vent.

00:19:03 ◼   ► They have little slider things, you can redirect it,

00:19:06 ◼   ► but there's no, I don't think I can turn that vent off.

00:19:08 ◼   ► - You don't have the little dial?

00:19:09 ◼   ► - No, but this isn't a problem in reality

00:19:11 ◼   ► because automatic climate control

00:19:14 ◼   ► never has the heat blowing out of the center vents.

00:19:16 ◼   ► It's always blowing in the feet vent,

00:19:18 ◼   ► the defroster vent, or both,

00:19:20 ◼   ► but it's never blowing out the front vents.

00:19:22 ◼   ► That's not how you're supposed to heat a car.

00:19:24 ◼   ► - Why wouldn't you want it out of the front vents?

00:19:26 ◼   ► - Because you don't need heat blowing in your face.

00:19:28 ◼   ► You need it blowing in your feet.

00:19:29 ◼   ► - Sometimes my face is cold.

00:19:31 ◼   ► I'll tell you where I want the air.

00:19:34 ◼   ► - I would not consider this a big problem in reality

00:19:37 ◼   ► for almost anybody because the way you're supposed to be

00:19:40 ◼   ► climate managing your car,

00:19:42 ◼   ► you shouldn't really be blowing a lot of hot air

00:19:43 ◼   ► through the front vents anyway, and also,

00:19:46 ◼   ► if you're using your phone in a dock

00:19:48 ◼   ► and running like waves or something,

00:19:49 ◼   ► it's already running so hot that, you know,

00:19:51 ◼   ► it actually might improve the heat efficiency of your car

00:19:53 ◼   ► to be blowing it across your phone on the way to your face.

00:19:55 ◼   ► - Okay, 'cause the phone is, you know, 150 degrees,

00:19:58 ◼   ► but the air coming out of the vent is 75,

00:20:00 ◼   ► so it's actually cooling it.

00:20:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:02 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:20:03 ◼   ► - All right, with regard to my beloved blue towel,

00:20:06 ◼   ► speaking of car-related things,

00:20:08 ◼   ► Andyg5 writes that the surgical rag that I use

00:20:11 ◼   ► called a HUC, H-U-C-K. It's a sterile towel used to dry hands after a surgical scrub before operating,

00:20:18 ◼   ► and apparently he has a million of them. And then Eugene Friesen writes in that they're actually

00:20:22 ◼   ► available on Amazon, so I'll put a link in the show notes. I was not aware of this, which is

00:20:25 ◼   ► super good news because I kind of need some. We also got some feedback about whether or not it's

00:20:30 ◼   ► plastic ventilating onto the interior of your windshield. John, do you have any thoughts on that

00:20:36 ◼   ► or do you not care? Yeah, no, that's true. Outgassing from, you know, that new car smell

00:20:40 ◼   ► and various other things that you smell in cars, outgassing from carpets and from plastic,

00:20:44 ◼   ► and a lot of that crap gets all over your windshield and makes it gross.

00:20:47 ◼   ► Fun.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Finally, or almost finally, actually, car subscriptions.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Zach, a friend of mine, asked, "Why not have a Lyft subscription?

00:20:57 ◼   ► Like insurance, the light users would subsidize the heavy ones."

00:21:00 ◼   ► That sounded like a brilliant idea.

00:21:02 ◼   ► And then, fast forward three days after I heard this feedback from my buddy Zach, and

00:21:06 ◼   ► I somehow saw an article or a headline or something like that

00:21:10 ◼   ► about how Lyft actually is or will soon be offering subscriptions,

00:21:13 ◼   ► which I didn't know was a thing.

00:21:15 ◼   ► - This is the kind of thing that like,

00:21:17 ◼   ► it's nice in a lot of situations,

00:21:20 ◼   ► and it might even prove to be nice

00:21:22 ◼   ► in the majority of situations for some people.

00:21:24 ◼   ► But the great flexibility of having your own car

00:21:28 ◼   ► parked in your driveway or in your garage

00:21:30 ◼   ► or near or in front of your place

00:21:32 ◼   ► is that it's always there ready for you.

00:21:34 ◼   ► It's dedicated capacity just for you.

00:21:37 ◼   ► If you're relying on, not public transit,

00:21:40 ◼   ► but if you're relying on services like Lyft or Uber

00:21:43 ◼   ► or other kind of car share services,

00:21:45 ◼   ► there's only a certain number of cars out there

00:21:47 ◼   ► at any given time.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And they're only in a certain number of places

00:21:49 ◼   ► and they're a lot less densely available

00:21:53 ◼   ► once you get out of the major cities.

00:21:54 ◼   ► When you have your own car, it's always there ready for you

00:21:57 ◼   ► no matter when you wanna use it with zero weight

00:22:00 ◼   ► or close enough to zero weight.

00:22:01 ◼   ► When you're relying on something like this,

00:22:04 ◼   ► it might work nine times out of 10,

00:22:05 ◼   ► but then the 10th time you go to use it,

00:22:07 ◼   ► oh, there aren't any for the next 45 minutes,

00:22:09 ◼   ► or it's a spike because of demand,

00:22:12 ◼   ► or the nearest one is too far away

00:22:15 ◼   ► and doesn't want to take your ride,

00:22:16 ◼   ► or you keep getting the same one over and over again

00:22:19 ◼   ► that some driver that's terrible that you don't want,

00:22:21 ◼   ► that their car smells like smoke and cats and stuff.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And it's like, when it's yours, when it's your car,

00:22:27 ◼   ► it is always there ready to go.

00:22:30 ◼   ► And so depending on how important that car

00:22:32 ◼   ► and the mobility are to you,

00:22:35 ◼   ► and I think for most people in most of America,

00:22:37 ◼   ► it's very important because the public infrastructure

00:22:39 ◼   ► just isn't there for most of us.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Having that car be dedicated to you,

00:22:43 ◼   ► having your own that's always ready to go,

00:22:45 ◼   ► that's always right there, that's always yours,

00:22:47 ◼   ► and you can put your stuff in it,

00:22:49 ◼   ► and you can know that it's always gonna be there

00:22:51 ◼   ► and be ready, that's gonna have a pretty big advantage

00:22:54 ◼   ► for a lot of people.

00:22:55 ◼   ► So I don't see personal car ownership

00:23:00 ◼   ► of some form going away.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Like Lyft and Uber, that's not that.

00:23:03 ◼   ► That's something else.

00:23:04 ◼   ► The subscription is just another way

00:23:06 ◼   ► to have cars that are yours.

00:23:07 ◼   ► So that I think makes some sense maybe in the future,

00:23:10 ◼   ► but it's never gonna be totally replaced in America

00:23:13 ◼   ► unless our density radically changes,

00:23:16 ◼   ► which I don't see happening.

00:23:17 ◼   ► - Well, this is a psychological pricing ploy,

00:23:19 ◼   ► like for city dwellers who are never gonna own a car

00:23:22 ◼   ► 'cause they can't afford a parking spot for it or whatever,

00:23:24 ◼   ► you use Lyft all the time anyway,

00:23:26 ◼   ► you can convince enough of them to subscribe,

00:23:29 ◼   ► essentially paying more like Zach said.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Most people will say,

00:23:32 ◼   ► oh, it's just easier to pay that subscription

00:23:34 ◼   ► and not have to worry about the hassle of,

00:23:36 ◼   ► you know, paying each time and everything.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And maybe that'll make me feel like,

00:23:38 ◼   ► oh, I'll use it more.

00:23:39 ◼   ► I have a subscription, I'll use it more, right?

00:23:41 ◼   ► And maybe they won't use it more, you know?

00:23:43 ◼   ► And so, Liffle ended up making more money

00:23:47 ◼   ► from the people who thought they were gonna really totally

00:23:48 ◼   ► use that description all the time,

00:23:50 ◼   ► but actually take the same number of rides

00:23:51 ◼   ► as they always did.

00:23:52 ◼   ► It ends up being a bad deal for them.

00:23:53 ◼   ► But the few heavy users get a really good deal

00:23:56 ◼   ► because now they can just ride as much as they want

00:23:58 ◼   ► for a flat fee.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Lyft will figure out the economics of it, I'm sure, and try to.

00:24:02 ◼   ► But it's the type of pricing psychology that can make everybody involved feel like they're

00:24:08 ◼   ► getting a good deal, even though obviously, you know, they're not, right?

00:24:11 ◼   ► So Lyft would be happy if they make more money, and the users would be happy if they perceive

00:24:19 ◼   ► the subscription as a good value, regardless of whether it's actually a good value.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Finally, somebody, and I don't have this email in front of me, somebody was very grumpy about

00:24:29 ◼   ► the fact that we called San Jose not very big.

00:24:31 ◼   ► And Jon, did you put this in here?

00:24:33 ◼   ► Would you like to…

00:24:34 ◼   ► It happened last year too when we were talking about San Jose and we got so much feedback

00:24:38 ◼   ► about it, I forget if we ever even did follow up about it, but we should, because I've totally

00:24:41 ◼   ► forgot about the follow up from last year already.

00:24:43 ◼   ► We're like, "Oh, San Jose, nobody's there, it's empty, it's not like San Francisco,

00:24:47 ◼   ► it's not a big city like San Francisco."

00:24:48 ◼   ► And anytime we say anything like that, someone from San Jose or near San Jose writes in to

00:24:52 ◼   ► tell us, "Well, you know, San Jose is bigger than San Francisco, has a bigger population

00:24:57 ◼   ► than San Francisco," you know, all those things about how San Jose is just massive compared

00:25:01 ◼   ► to everything that we, you know, we're saying it's small but it's not, right? And to that

00:25:07 ◼   ► I would say Texas has more people than San Jose, but if I drop a pin anywhere in Texas,

00:25:12 ◼   ► chances are good I'm going to look around and not see that much. It's all about density.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Yes, San Jose is bigger. San Jose has more people. But practically speaking, if you are

00:25:22 ◼   ► person you get dropped down in WWC and you look around you'd be like where are all

00:25:26 ◼   ► the people as a tumbleweed goes by right like it is very different

00:25:30 ◼   ► experience from the vastly higher density of where Moscone is in San

00:25:35 ◼   ► Francisco so that's what we meant we know it's a big city we know there's lots

00:25:38 ◼   ► of people somewhere also I was interested not a single person refuted

00:25:43 ◼   ► my Truman Show theory about everybody who works there but they're just writing

00:25:49 ◼   ► your name down in the little book, in the little picture of you that says, "Do not

00:25:53 ◼   ► serve this person," or, "Serve this person even more slowly than usual."

00:25:56 ◼   ► I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the difference. Like...

00:25:59 ◼   ► Oh, here we go.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Oh, you wanted to order something? I don't know if I can do that. I'll have to check

00:26:03 ◼   ► with my boss to see if you can order something.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Well, I'm gonna laugh when you get to SOPO or whatever it's called, and they are like,

00:26:10 ◼   ► "Oh, wait, you're Marco. Yeah, we're not serving you." What would you do? You would

00:26:14 ◼   ► have nowhere to go. You would have no court to rule over.

00:26:17 ◼   ► I'd go to the beer and sausage place up the street.

00:26:20 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:26:20 ◼   ► Fair enough.

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00:28:16 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:28:18 ◼   ► - All right, it's time.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I'm gonna go to sleep now.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Guys, there's been some Mac Pro news.

00:28:27 ◼   ► - I love that you're bringing this up.

00:28:28 ◼   ► You're into this topic. - What am I gonna do?

00:28:30 ◼   ► - You could've just moved on.

00:28:31 ◼   ► - You should summarize the Mac Pro news,

00:28:32 ◼   ► that's what you should do.

00:28:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, chief summarizer and chief.

00:28:35 ◼   ► - I'm going to attempt to.

00:28:36 ◼   ► So, friend of the show, said with no sarcasm,

00:28:39 ◼   ► of the show, Matthew Panzorino, was invited by himself, which is actually kind of interesting

00:28:44 ◼   ► in and of itself. I don't know if we need to unpack that right now or not, but Matt

00:28:47 ◼   ► Panzorino was invited to Apple and was put in front of several different, both executives

00:28:53 ◼   ► and engineers and so on, to talk about, "Hey, what's going on with Mac Pro?" And my summary,

00:29:00 ◼   ► which I'm sure both of you will take issue with, and that's fine, but my summary is Apple

00:29:04 ◼   ► wanted to give a little more insight into what's going on with the Mac Pro.

00:29:09 ◼   ► You could, we can and surely will, pontificate about why that is, but

00:29:14 ◼   ► one can assume, and I think they actually said that, "Hey, we don't want you to make purchasing decisions on the hope that the Mac Pro

00:29:21 ◼   ► is coming out later this year." So they made it plain that it will not be out until 2019. They said 2019,

00:29:28 ◼   ► but we don't know when in 2019.

00:29:31 ◼   ► They said that, and this is what I found most interesting, they've created a workflow group,

00:29:38 ◼   ► as I believe what they called it, and what that basically means is they have contracted

00:29:41 ◼   ► and/or hired creative professionals to sit literally next to the people who work on,

00:29:49 ◼   ► say Final Cut Pro and work on the Mac Pro as well, in order to better understand what

00:29:55 ◼   ► their workflows are.

00:29:56 ◼   ► And they cited an example, and I think it was Final Cut Pro, it doesn't really matter,

00:29:59 ◼   ► But they set in an example of, oh, these creative professionals, there's they open this one

00:30:03 ◼   ► dialogue in Final Cut Pro all the time.

00:30:06 ◼   ► And it takes like 10 seconds to open this dialogue.

00:30:09 ◼   ► And nobody at Apple somehow knew this.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And so because they're now sitting next to each other, you know, the creative professionals

00:30:16 ◼   ► walked down the hall and said, Hey, guys, can we do something about this dialogue?

00:30:19 ◼   ► Because this sucks.

00:30:21 ◼   ► And sure enough, it turned out there was like an error in some driver somewhere or something

00:30:24 ◼   ► like that.

00:30:25 ◼   ► And they were able to fix it.

00:30:27 ◼   ► So the point of all this is, Apple is trying to engage with the broader professional community,

00:30:32 ◼   ► people like us, and say, "Hey, you know, you need to buy an iMac Pro, go buy an iMac Pro.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Don't wait for the Mac Pro, because you're not getting it for a while."

00:30:42 ◼   ► Additionally, they're engaging with the broader professional community in the sense that they've

00:30:45 ◼   ► asked some of these people to come in-house and help them understand what their workflows

00:30:49 ◼   ► are, which I think you can argue both that that's great and that's terrible, and I'm

00:30:55 ◼   ► I'm sure we're about to do exactly that.

00:30:58 ◼   ► But one way or another, it is more insight than we've had into the Mac Pro in a long,

00:31:02 ◼   ► long time.

00:31:04 ◼   ► And it shows us that it's still a thing, which is exciting.

00:31:07 ◼   ► It tells us roughly, with an emphasis on roughly, when it's going to be released.

00:31:12 ◼   ► And they also said that, no, no, no, it's going to be modular.

00:31:15 ◼   ► And I am happy to report, John Syracuse, that they are making it plain or perhaps reiterating

00:31:22 ◼   ► that they are making a display for it as well.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Iterating old news not new. Still, I know you're very excited and I am happy that you're happy

00:31:30 ◼   ► That is I think my summary and as much as I'm snarking about this. This is actually pretty fascinating even for me

00:31:37 ◼   ► I don't see a Mac Pro in my future

00:31:39 ◼   ► but this is really really really interesting and a very different approach than Apple's taken in the past and

00:31:45 ◼   ► whether or not I view a Mac Pro as something I need to buy and

00:31:49 ◼   ► Honestly, I don't think it's something that any of us need to buy but we can argue about that another time

00:31:54 ◼   ► I still think that this approach is really fascinating.

00:31:59 ◼   ► So with that in mind, I will open the floor.

00:32:01 ◼   ► Perhaps we can start with Marco.

00:32:03 ◼   ► What are your thoughts?

00:32:04 ◼   ► - I mean, to me, this has been positioned and summarized

00:32:09 ◼   ► by many, including chief summarizer and chief,

00:32:11 ◼   ► in part, as a Mac Pro roundtable successor from last year.

00:32:16 ◼   ► But there's really no new information here

00:32:21 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro.

00:32:21 ◼   ► The only thing that we know about the Mac Pro

00:32:23 ◼   ► that we didn't know before is that it's definitely

00:32:26 ◼   ► not coming out this year.

00:32:28 ◼   ► That's the only thing that's new here.

00:32:30 ◼   ► What this was really about, I think,

00:32:33 ◼   ► is setting expectations for that, for W2C to come and go,

00:32:38 ◼   ► and for the rest of the year to come and go,

00:32:40 ◼   ► without pros saying, "Hey, where the heck's the Mac Pro?"

00:32:43 ◼   ► That's really what I think this was about on that side,

00:32:46 ◼   ► and then to kind of paper over that,

00:32:50 ◼   ► or to offset that with something that's positive

00:32:54 ◼   ► by showing off that they have this new

00:32:56 ◼   ► kind of like in-house study of pro users

00:33:00 ◼   ► in their natural environment.

00:33:02 ◼   ► - Geometrically speaking, this announcement was

00:33:06 ◼   ► an open-faced (beep) sandwich

00:33:08 ◼   ► that fell face down on the floor.

00:33:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:11 ◼   ► Because you get the bad news,

00:33:13 ◼   ► there's no good news, bad news, good news.

00:33:16 ◼   ► You just get the bad news and then you get the good news.

00:33:19 ◼   ► So the bad news is no Mac Pro this year,

00:33:21 ◼   ► and the good news is look at the Pro workflow team.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Isn't that cool?

00:33:25 ◼   ► - And you know, honestly, I mean,

00:33:27 ◼   ► this is heavy on the PR puff, obviously.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Not from Panzer, but from Apple.

00:33:34 ◼   ► And there's not a lot of new information really here,

00:33:38 ◼   ► but it is interesting that this Pro group thing

00:33:42 ◼   ► was created there and is being observed

00:33:46 ◼   ► and being worked with.

00:33:47 ◼   ► That is the more interesting part of this announcement,

00:33:49 ◼   ► by far, the actual, again, there's no information

00:33:52 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro.

00:33:53 ◼   ► We don't know anything about the Mac Pro,

00:33:54 ◼   ► except it's not coming this year.

00:33:56 ◼   ► I can speculate on why.

00:33:58 ◼   ► You know, we all can, many of us have.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Honestly, I don't think it's that interesting yet,

00:34:03 ◼   ► because again, we have no new information

00:34:06 ◼   ► except that big hole in the timeline of

00:34:09 ◼   ► it's gonna be next year, which I'm glad they said

00:34:12 ◼   ► it's going to be 2019, as opposed to

00:34:14 ◼   ► it's not going to be this year,

00:34:16 ◼   ► that it could be 2025 or never.

00:34:18 ◼   ► So at least they committed to a year.

00:34:21 ◼   ► You can also speculate, as many people have,

00:34:23 ◼   ► why is it taking Apple so long to develop

00:34:26 ◼   ► what should probably just be a fairly straightforward

00:34:29 ◼   ► like tower or something tower-like.

00:34:31 ◼   ► The answer to that that's most likely

00:34:33 ◼   ► is that last year, like about a year ago

00:34:36 ◼   ► when they had that round table,

00:34:38 ◼   ► I think it is very likely that they literally

00:34:40 ◼   ► had not even started yet.

00:34:41 ◼   ► That it was like, it was decided within a very short time

00:34:45 ◼   ► before that, that they were going to do this.

00:34:48 ◼   ► And that means that from 2013 until 2017,

00:34:53 ◼   ► they were probably not doing any work at all on a Mac Pro.

00:34:57 ◼   ► They were probably assuming the iMac Pro was it.

00:35:00 ◼   ► And they were only working on the iMac Pro.

00:35:02 ◼   ► So it's not that they couldn't do a new tower

00:35:06 ◼   ► in five years or whatever since the last Mac Pro.

00:35:10 ◼   ► It's that they can't do a new tower in a year and a half.

00:35:12 ◼   ► That's I think what we're really seeing here.

00:35:15 ◼   ► But even that is slightly concerning,

00:35:17 ◼   ► because even that's like, you know,

00:35:19 ◼   ► what pros want is new hardware

00:35:22 ◼   ► in some kind of expandable box.

00:35:24 ◼   ► We don't need fancy designs,

00:35:26 ◼   ► we don't need a lot of different types of quote innovation.

00:35:30 ◼   ► We just need new guts in a box.

00:35:33 ◼   ► And for Apple to be, you know,

00:35:36 ◼   ► kinda taking their sweet time

00:35:37 ◼   ► and trying to work on probably something

00:35:39 ◼   ► that's like really, you know, highly designed,

00:35:41 ◼   ► highly custom, that's nice.

00:35:43 ◼   ► I'm not sure that satisfies Apple,

00:35:45 ◼   ► but that's not really what pros are asking for

00:35:47 ◼   ► for this product, but I don't think we can talk Apple

00:35:51 ◼   ► out of that kind of design anymore.

00:35:52 ◼   ► I think that's kind of just what they do.

00:35:54 ◼   ► And from that point of view, the time scale seems reasonable,

00:35:58 ◼   ► that they just started last year,

00:36:01 ◼   ► and they're not just doing something basic,

00:36:02 ◼   ► even though many of us want them to do exactly that

00:36:04 ◼   ► for this product, because they can save the innovation

00:36:07 ◼   ► for all of the rest of their products,

00:36:09 ◼   ► including the iMac Pro, which is fairly innovative

00:36:12 ◼   ► a few ways and it's really nice.

00:36:14 ◼   ► I really like the iMac Pro.

00:36:16 ◼   ► But anyway, they're not doing that so, oh well.

00:36:19 ◼   ► I do think it's interesting also to think now,

00:36:22 ◼   ► maybe one of the reasons they're taking

00:36:24 ◼   ► a little bit of time on this is,

00:36:26 ◼   ► you know, what I expected was the iMac Pro guts

00:36:30 ◼   ► in a box with a couple of GPU slots

00:36:33 ◼   ► and maybe, you know, space for a few M2 drive modules.

00:36:37 ◼   ► I don't think that's what they're doing.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And when the iMac Pro came out,

00:36:42 ◼   ► and when we saw how awesome it was,

00:36:45 ◼   ► and how few downsides it had,

00:36:47 ◼   ► and how few restrictions it had,

00:36:49 ◼   ► one of the things that we said at the time was,

00:36:52 ◼   ► what the heck is left for the Mac Pro to address?

00:36:55 ◼   ► Like, how much headroom above this

00:36:58 ◼   ► can the Mac Pro really achieve?

00:36:59 ◼   ► You know, are they gonna go dual processor maybe,

00:37:02 ◼   ► have many graphics cards supported,

00:37:04 ◼   ► or different types of slots, or whatever?

00:37:06 ◼   ► Who knows what, right?

00:37:07 ◼   ► We were trying to figure out like,

00:37:08 ◼   ► what else, what is left for the Mac Pro to do

00:37:10 ◼   ► that the iMac Pro doesn't do.

00:37:12 ◼   ► So maybe in order to create more headroom in that area,

00:37:17 ◼   ► maybe that took a bit of special engineering.

00:37:19 ◼   ► Maybe they're doing something they haven't done before.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Like for instance, if they're working from the roadmap

00:37:24 ◼   ► of the old Mac Pro, the 2013 Mac Pro,

00:37:27 ◼   ► that one had this rigid GPU arrangement

00:37:30 ◼   ► that only supported these two GPUs

00:37:32 ◼   ► and this one kind of weird arrangement

00:37:33 ◼   ► with this kind of weird integration

00:37:34 ◼   ► with the Thunderbolt bus, and it only supported one CPU

00:37:38 ◼   ► and the whatever it is, four or six RAM slots

00:37:41 ◼   ► and one SSD module, maybe they're doing dual socket CPUs,

00:37:45 ◼   ► and that dramatically complicates things,

00:37:49 ◼   ► and how you have to lay out the internals,

00:37:52 ◼   ► how you have to cool things.

00:37:54 ◼   ► Maybe they're doing a box that can accommodate

00:37:56 ◼   ► lots of different configurations,

00:37:58 ◼   ► like the old towers could.

00:37:59 ◼   ► So maybe you could have one or two CPUs,

00:38:02 ◼   ► one or four GPUs.

00:38:04 ◼   ► They did all sorts of crazy things

00:38:05 ◼   ► back with the old cheese graders and stuff.

00:38:08 ◼   ► The difference now is that the cheese graters

00:38:10 ◼   ► were all before Thunderbolt.

00:38:12 ◼   ► There was a lot less internal PCI Express bandwidth

00:38:16 ◼   ► and things like that that had to be allocated

00:38:18 ◼   ► to external storage.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And GPUs were lower bandwidth

00:38:22 ◼   ► and everything was lower bandwidth back then.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And so to design something now,

00:38:27 ◼   ► you have to really consider how you balance

00:38:29 ◼   ► PCI Express allocations and lanes and speeds

00:38:33 ◼   ► between internal and external stuff,

00:38:34 ◼   ► how you route video signals over the Thunderbolt,

00:38:36 ◼   ► and how you, like do you route the output of the GPU

00:38:39 ◼   ► to a Thunderbolt port on the back,

00:38:41 ◼   ► like how do you do that?

00:38:43 ◼   ► It's fairly complicated to design a really good

00:38:47 ◼   ► Mac Pro tower with modern features

00:38:51 ◼   ► and modern bandwidth and everything else

00:38:53 ◼   ► that also has interchangeable slots,

00:38:56 ◼   ► like that's a hard thing.

00:38:57 ◼   ► So if they're doing something like that,

00:39:00 ◼   ► taking two years to do it seems reasonable.

00:39:02 ◼   ► I don't know if that's what they're doing,

00:39:03 ◼   ► but I hope so.

00:39:05 ◼   ► - So like the people who are saying,

00:39:06 ◼   ► wanted to just give us a box and slap things together.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I think there's a minimum bar of not even innovation,

00:39:14 ◼   ► but just quality or attention to detail or thoughtfulness

00:39:18 ◼   ► that we expect from Apple.

00:39:19 ◼   ► A lot of people look at the cheese graters and say,

00:39:21 ◼   ► oh, it's just a tower case.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a nice looking tower case, but whatever.

00:39:24 ◼   ► It's just a tower.

00:39:25 ◼   ► It has a door, but it's just got a bunch of slots

00:39:27 ◼   ► and a motherboard and RAM.

00:39:29 ◼   ► It's not much different from PC tower,

00:39:31 ◼   ► as evidenced by all the PC tower clones that came after it.

00:39:34 ◼   ► But I think that the very first one, the Power Mac G5, I think that probably took them longer

00:39:43 ◼   ► to design that plain, boring tower case and everything that goes into it than they're

00:39:48 ◼   ► spending, than they're going to end up spending on this Mac Pro.

00:39:52 ◼   ► It's not because they're insisting on doing something really weird like the trash can,

00:39:57 ◼   ► right?

00:39:58 ◼   ► Because the Power Mac G5 was not really weird.

00:40:01 ◼   ► It was a tower, like straightforward.

00:40:03 ◼   ► Like it wasn't weird at all.

00:40:06 ◼   ► But if you look at it, it's like,

00:40:08 ◼   ► well, it's very carefully designed.

00:40:09 ◼   ► The case has a very simple design

00:40:16 ◼   ► with a big curved piece of aluminum wrapped around

00:40:19 ◼   ► a minimum number of seams.

00:40:21 ◼   ► The door giving you access to the insides,

00:40:26 ◼   ► the way the door fits in and that whole mechanism,

00:40:27 ◼   ► how they route all the ribbon cables

00:40:30 ◼   ► so they're not, to make it look nice on the inside

00:40:33 ◼   ► the ribbon cables are all tucked behind the motherboard and are just the right length

00:40:35 ◼   ► and stuff like that. The way the motherboard is laid out, I mean, all the various custom

00:40:41 ◼   ► chips that might go into it that aren't in any other Mac. It's not rocket science, and

00:40:45 ◼   ► it's not like the thing that people are afraid of, like, oh, it's going to be shaped like

00:40:48 ◼   ► a squid, and it's going to have, you know, Thunderbolt 3 connecting everything, and,

00:40:52 ◼   ► like, you know, like all sorts of "just make me a box." Say Apple is doing that. We're

00:40:57 ◼   ► just making you a box. It is literally a tower. The air comes in the front and out the back.

00:41:02 ◼   ► It is totally straightforward, but doing that the Apple way takes longer than people think.

00:41:09 ◼   ► And I kind of want them to do it the Apple way.

00:41:13 ◼   ► Like if you're in a super big hurry, I can understand.

00:41:15 ◼   ► Like, you're like, "We need towers yesterday.

00:41:16 ◼   ► We can't use the iMac Pro for whatever reasons."

00:41:20 ◼   ► Just slap it together.

00:41:23 ◼   ► People who would be happy with the Hackintosh, right?

00:41:25 ◼   ► I don't care what it looks like, how nice it is.

00:41:27 ◼   ► I don't care how nice the seams are or whatever.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Just slap it together.

00:41:31 ◼   ► But I don't think Apple is really capable of doing that.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Even its products that we, you know, its "worst" products, like the products that we complain

00:41:39 ◼   ► about like, "Oh, you're still selling the MacBook Air?" or whatever.

00:41:42 ◼   ► The MacBook Air is still nice, like industrial design-wise.

00:41:45 ◼   ► The screen is gross, but everything else about it, you know, it looks expensive and carefully

00:41:50 ◼   ► designed.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Like, it's not falling apart and has weird seams and things poking out of it and doesn't

00:41:56 ◼   ► look slapped together.

00:41:57 ◼   ► It looks old, but it doesn't look slapped together.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Apple generally just is not institutionally capable of making hardware that looks like

00:42:07 ◼   ► it's been slapped together.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Like on a speedy schedule, we didn't have time to actually really design this, so we

00:42:11 ◼   ► just used a bunch of stock parts and we screwed them together.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Like the way the bad rap of American cars or any car maker that uses a parts bin dashboard

00:42:19 ◼   ► where we have a bunch of things that we use in all our cars like the window switches or

00:42:24 ◼   ► whatever and we're not going to design custom ones for this car because it's too much trouble

00:42:26 ◼   ► to just slap in the same switches that we use on all our other cars.

00:42:29 ◼   ► American car markets used to do stuff like this all the time these days.

00:42:33 ◼   ► There's more custom parts in cars than you would expect, but that type of thing is just

00:42:38 ◼   ► not how Apple does things.

00:42:40 ◼   ► They're not, aside from trying to share the same stupid keyboard on all their laptops,

00:42:44 ◼   ► like I don't think this thing is going to, you know, it could be as boring as bread and

00:42:51 ◼   ► butter and it's still going to take them two years to make it because that's just how long

00:42:54 ◼   ► this stuff takes.

00:42:55 ◼   ► And like you were saying, Marco, with like you were thinking that it would just be the

00:42:58 ◼   ► iMac Pro internals. I still think that. I thought that from the beginning that, look,

00:43:05 ◼   ► don't get your hopes up for the insides of this Mac Pro to be anything other than the

00:43:08 ◼   ► insides of that, in terms of specs. Like, obviously things will be rearranged and there'd

00:43:11 ◼   ► be a new board and, you know, different slots and stuff like that, but fully expected to

00:43:16 ◼   ► have a T2 and to have the same class of Xeon and so on and so forth. Now with the delay,

00:43:22 ◼   ► I still more or less expect it to be rearranged iMac Pro internals. Like, I don't expect it

00:43:27 ◼   ► to have a T3 chip, I expect it to have a T2 chip, right?

00:43:30 ◼   ► 'Cause they don't have time to make a whole other one

00:43:32 ◼   ► of those in this timeline, right?

00:43:34 ◼   ► Unless they were already making it

00:43:36 ◼   ► for the iMac Pro Successor, which I think they are not,

00:43:38 ◼   ► right?

00:43:39 ◼   ► So I expect iMac Pro internals,

00:43:41 ◼   ► maybe with the newer Xeon,

00:43:43 ◼   ► if it's a drop-in replacement, right?

00:43:45 ◼   ► More slots for everything, more RAM slots,

00:43:48 ◼   ► more storage spots,

00:43:49 ◼   ► possibly more room for internal storage, right?

00:43:54 ◼   ► Just like capacity.

00:43:57 ◼   ► from the design, sort of the design brief of this thing should be like more thermal

00:44:01 ◼   ► capacity than an iMac Pro and every other feature flows from that.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Because if you don't do more thermal capacity than an iMac Pro, then the only thing, the

00:44:08 ◼   ► only benefit you're getting is well, if the screen breaks you don't lose your whole computer,

00:44:11 ◼   ► right?

00:44:12 ◼   ► So I feel like this thing is going to have higher thermal ceiling than the iMac Pro and

00:44:17 ◼   ► then you can do lots of stuff with that thermal ceiling and then it becomes a question of

00:44:21 ◼   ► talking to these Pro people like, what do you want?

00:44:24 ◼   ► Do you want two CPUs?

00:44:25 ◼   ► Would you rather have more PCI Express slots?

00:44:27 ◼   ► Do we have to offer you both?

00:44:28 ◼   ► If we just made all of them have one CPU, would that be okay?

00:44:31 ◼   ► How much internal storage do you want versus external?

00:44:34 ◼   ► But it's all how you spend your thermal budget, but the budget has to be way higher than the

00:44:39 ◼   ► iMac Pro or anybody.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Capacity.

00:44:42 ◼   ► How much storage can you put in?

00:44:43 ◼   ► How much RAM can you put in it?

00:44:46 ◼   ► And then, of course, how much heat can it dissipate?

00:44:48 ◼   ► How many GPUs can you put in?

00:44:49 ◼   ► How big can the GPUs be?

00:44:52 ◼   ► And then finally, like you said in the iMac Pro, one of the reasons you like it is because

00:44:55 ◼   ► it doesn't sound like a hand dryer all the time.

00:44:59 ◼   ► To make a big tower computer that has high thermal capacity but is also reasonably quiet

00:45:06 ◼   ► is tricky.

00:45:07 ◼   ► Like, I think about all the PCs I see, and sometimes Lustafter, that have these nicely

00:45:13 ◼   ► designed PCs that have big cooling capacity and try to be quiet.

00:45:17 ◼   ► That doesn't happen if you just take a box and slap a bunch of fans in it.

00:45:21 ◼   ► You have to be thoughtful in some ways to make sure you don't have any weird hot spots

00:45:26 ◼   ► because you didn't think about this component over there.

00:45:28 ◼   ► I know people at Bill Cesar are like, "Oh, just get a really big diameter fan and put

00:45:31 ◼   ► a whole bunch of them in there," and it's like straightforward.

00:45:33 ◼   ► You just put pieces together.

00:45:34 ◼   ► But hand-assembling a PC like that, unless you have lots of experience and know exactly

00:45:39 ◼   ► how everything's going to work with a bunch of custom parts, can lead to weird things

00:45:43 ◼   ► where the heat gradients that you didn't expect or a particular component that is not getting

00:45:49 ◼   ► adequate cooling because there's just no way to route air to there.

00:45:52 ◼   ► It's hacky and it's not up to Apple's quality.

00:45:55 ◼   ► So I think that even if Apple is making the most boring box we could possibly think of,

00:46:04 ◼   ► that they are going to do a better job than I think some people would want, those hackintosh-type

00:46:10 ◼   ► customers.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And as far as I'm concerned, as someone who doesn't need this thing right now, although

00:46:14 ◼   ► you may disagree when you think to how old my Mac is, but I'd rather, like, spend the

00:46:19 ◼   ► time. Spend the time to make, even if it's a boring tower, spend the time to make a boring

00:46:23 ◼   ► tower that's as nice as a cheese grater. Spend the time to make it look nice, spend the time

00:46:27 ◼   ► to make sure that it's super reliable, that it's quiet, figure out a way to make it quiet,

00:46:32 ◼   ► and yes, spend the time talking to people, various pros, and saying, "What do you want

00:46:36 ◼   ► out of this machine?" Like, do we have to make two slots for CPUs, or is that something

00:46:40 ◼   ► that nobody wants and we don't have to do that? Because I don't think they're going

00:46:43 ◼   ► have 17 different configurable versions of this, right? And I also don't think they're going to

00:46:48 ◼   ► make it some magic modular snap together future technology Thunderbolt 3 powered octopus thing.

00:46:56 ◼   ► I know lots of people think that, you know, 2019 this is going to be some crazy trash can,

00:47:00 ◼   ► but I don't, I don't think that. I think it's going to be a fairly straightforward machine.

00:47:02 ◼   ► I just want it to be nice. I just, um, I, I'm struggling because I, I do see both sides of

00:47:08 ◼   ► this, like on the one side, just like you guys had said, you know, why not just make,

00:47:13 ◼   ► take the old cheese grater, you know, form factor, slap new bits in it and call it a day. But there's

00:47:20 ◼   ► been a lot of changes to the Mac in the last couple of years. You know, what used to be,

00:47:24 ◼   ► for the purposes of this conversation, what used to be just vanilla Intel motherboards with vanilla

00:47:29 ◼   ► Intel chips on them now are not quite so simple. We have, you know, the T2 that one of you guys

00:47:35 ◼   ► mentioned earlier. We have all these different, you know, coprocessors. We have a touch bar that

00:47:39 ◼   ► We have never seen be external to the device.

00:47:42 ◼   ► We have a secure enclave.

00:47:44 ◼   ► There's so many different things that make this so much more complex than before.

00:47:47 ◼   ► And when you also add modularity into this, because there's basically no Apple computer

00:47:56 ◼   ► sold today that is as modular as we are expecting and being told that this will be.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And I can't imagine it's easy to keep up with these extremely stringent security requirements

00:48:09 ◼   ► while also doing this modular thing.

00:48:13 ◼   ► So as an example, like this Phantom Apple display, this new Cinema Display, if you will,

00:48:18 ◼   ► presumably that's going to have a camera in it, an iSight camera in it, or a FaceTime camera,

00:48:22 ◼   ► whatever they're calling it now.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Presumably they're going to want that to be controlled by the T2,

00:48:27 ◼   ► or whatever it is that controls them these days.

00:48:30 ◼   ► How do you do that when it's not part of the device itself?

00:48:34 ◼   ► How does that work?

00:48:35 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, you could just say, "Yeah, screw it.

00:48:39 ◼   ► If somebody can hack your camera, well, tough nuggies, you made this bed yourself."

00:48:42 ◼   ► But that's not Apple's way.

00:48:44 ◼   ► So I understand all the angst about, "Oh, we'll just use a cheese grater,

00:48:47 ◼   ► put some new bits in it, and walk away."

00:48:49 ◼   ► And I could make a pretty good argument that they should do that

00:48:52 ◼   ► and then do the real Mac Pro afterwards.

00:48:55 ◼   ► But just like you said, Jon, that's not Apple's way.

00:48:58 ◼   ► Apple's way is to make this interesting and innovative and smart.

00:49:02 ◼   ► And I think and I hope that's what they're doing.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Well, nice. It doesn't have to be innovative. Because as a cheese grater, is it innovative?

00:49:09 ◼   ► What's innovative about the cheese grater? The only thing that's innovative about it is how nice it is.

00:49:12 ◼   ► It's just a tower case. The CPUs weren't arranged in an octagon. It wasn't cooled by jellyfish.

00:49:21 ◼   ► It was just a tower case with fans and had hard drives and RAM and slots. It was very straightforward.

00:49:28 ◼   ► But it's nice. The trash can was innovative. Wow, this tube-shaped thing with a chimney design and

00:49:34 ◼   ► and a little triangle motherboard and two GPUs and like, that was an innovative design.

00:49:39 ◼   ► That's what people are afraid is happening.

00:49:41 ◼   ► And I mean, I'm assuming, talking to the pros, that pros are not saying, "Please make it,

00:49:46 ◼   ► you know, really weird."

00:49:47 ◼   ► Like they don't care what it looks like.

00:49:49 ◼   ► I'm hoping the influence of talking to these people will cause it to be more—will push

00:49:55 ◼   ► back against any unconventional thinking that Apple may bring to the table.

00:49:59 ◼   ► Like, "What if we gave you something like this?"

00:50:00 ◼   ► I hope the pros go, "That might work, but I know this will work.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Why don't you just make me this?

00:50:05 ◼   ► And by the way, this article, unless I'm mistaken,

00:50:07 ◼   ► does not say that this Pro workflow team

00:50:09 ◼   ► was created for this.

00:50:11 ◼   ► It just tells you about the Pro workflow team.

00:50:12 ◼   ► I have no idea how long the Pro workflow team

00:50:14 ◼   ► has been in Apple.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Maybe they've been there for a decade

00:50:16 ◼   ► advising the Final Cut Pro team

00:50:17 ◼   ► and every Pro Mac that they've ever made, right?

00:50:20 ◼   ► This is just part of, to soften the blow

00:50:22 ◼   ► of the Mac grownup being this year,

00:50:24 ◼   ► we'll tell you about a thing that previously

00:50:26 ◼   ► we had no reason to tell you about,

00:50:28 ◼   ► because what do you care what we do internally, right?

00:50:30 ◼   ► But to make you feel like we're really paying attention,

00:50:32 ◼   ► and we'll tell you about this."

00:50:34 ◼   ► Which I think is fine.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Like if someone snarkily tweeted,

00:50:36 ◼   ► "Congratulations, Apple.

00:50:37 ◼   ► You've discovered user acceptance testing."

00:50:39 ◼   ► Which is snarky, but probably wrong,

00:50:41 ◼   ► because Apple hasn't discovered it.

00:50:42 ◼   ► Like I said, I think this has always existed.

00:50:45 ◼   ► Maybe it's been ramped up.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Maybe they've been given closer access to machines

00:50:48 ◼   ► instead of just being given weird, you know,

00:50:50 ◼   ► disguised boxes and saying, "What do you think of this?"

00:50:53 ◼   ► But this is the type of thing

00:50:56 ◼   ► that you would hope any company is doing,

00:50:59 ◼   ► But the legend of Apple, the face that they present to the world, doesn't include this.

00:51:08 ◼   ► The legend of Apple is, we don't need to talk to people to know what to make.

00:51:13 ◼   ► We don't do focus groups, we don't ask you what you want because you don't know what

00:51:16 ◼   ► you want.

00:51:17 ◼   ► We'll tell you what you want.

00:51:20 ◼   ► We just go off to the mountain and we come down with a thing and trust me, you'll love

00:51:23 ◼   ► it.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Right?

00:51:25 ◼   ► And that's how we got the touch bar.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Eh, maybe not.

00:51:27 ◼   ► Maybe that's more of the focus group thing or someone has an idea and you tell people do you think this is a good idea?

00:51:31 ◼   ► And everyone goes yeah, that sounds like it might be a good idea, but people are dummies like this

00:51:35 ◼   ► like it's a steam job the Steve Jobs school of thought of like

00:51:38 ◼   ► You know

00:51:39 ◼   ► Don't ask people like we are smart enough on our own to figure it out if we ask people will make mediocre stuff because I mean

00:51:45 ◼   ► That's that's true of any product focus groups are death. It's like the you know, the Homer car from from the Simpsons, right?

00:51:51 ◼   ► Just everyone has ideas about what they think they want, but everyone is not a product designer

00:51:55 ◼   ► It's your job as a product designer to synthesize their desires and figure out what it is that

00:52:00 ◼   ► they really want, so on and so forth.

00:52:01 ◼   ► But the more a company is perceived to be allowing the customer to lead them, the more

00:52:09 ◼   ► it is likely to make mediocre products and to lose sight of true innovation.

00:52:15 ◼   ► It's all innovative dilemma thing.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Like if you just keep talking to your best customers, they'll continually ask for – like

00:52:19 ◼   ► we do on the show, essentially.

00:52:21 ◼   ► If you just listen to your mainframe customers, they keep telling you about how they want

00:52:24 ◼   ► you to make better and better mainframes and you missed the PC revolution, right? Because

00:52:27 ◼   ► you're just like, "Well, all of our biggest customers say they want this and they want

00:52:31 ◼   ► that." And you will never make the PC if you keep talking to your mainframe customers.

00:52:36 ◼   ► You have to say, "Well, actually, there's another thing we should be doing, and those

00:52:38 ◼   ► customers will never tell us to do that. There's a million business books about this, right?"

00:52:43 ◼   ► But Apple, we don't perceive as saying, "We're not really sure how to make a pro computer.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Can we get some pros in here to tell us what do you like? Do you like this? Do you like

00:52:49 ◼   ► that?" It's from a position of weakness, and we want them to just know everything automatically.

00:52:54 ◼   ► and just make beautiful things that everybody loved.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Reality, of course, is neither extreme is true.

00:52:58 ◼   ► Steve Jobs' Apple still took customer feedback

00:53:02 ◼   ► and that's always been a part of the process.

00:53:04 ◼   ► And this whole pro-Work Vault team,

00:53:06 ◼   ► I'm sure, does have some influence,

00:53:07 ◼   ► but in the end, if Johnny Ive doesn't want it,

00:53:09 ◼   ► it's not going on there.

00:53:10 ◼   ► So I think this is one of the reasons

00:53:15 ◼   ► you don't talk about your process,

00:53:18 ◼   ► because once people outside the company

00:53:20 ◼   ► start thinking about your process,

00:53:22 ◼   ► It loses some of the magic and you start worrying about,

00:53:27 ◼   ► is that really the best process to do this?

00:53:30 ◼   ► I'm not on the pro workflow team.

00:53:31 ◼   ► What if they're not talking to me?

00:53:32 ◼   ► In fact, we got some feedback about that

00:53:34 ◼   ► from other people saying, yeah, they're talking to pros

00:53:36 ◼   ► in film and video and whatever industries,

00:53:39 ◼   ► but they're not talking to pros in my industry,

00:53:41 ◼   ► whatever that may be, you know, academics, R&D,

00:53:45 ◼   ► you know, scientific stuff.

00:53:48 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, I forget what the,

00:53:51 ◼   ► categories outside of

00:53:53 ◼   ► What they have listed that are on the pro work of the for all we know the pro

00:53:57 ◼   ► Work for team does include all those they didn't tell us everything about them. But either way if you don't feel like your

00:54:02 ◼   ► Views are being represented and you buy into the idea that it's that small group of people

00:54:08 ◼   ► That's essentially dictating what this machine will look like that doesn't feel good either

00:54:11 ◼   ► Because now when the machine comes out you'd be like, oh great that business is a great machine for video editors

00:54:16 ◼   ► But for me doing medical imaging it sucks. They should have had medical images in their pro workflow team

00:54:20 ◼   ► That's, you know, that's the difficulty of making any product.

00:54:24 ◼   ► They're not going to make an entire line of Mac Pros to suit everybody's needs.

00:54:29 ◼   ► They're going to make one that suits most people's needs, where most is defined

00:54:34 ◼   ► as people Apple thinks will buy a Mac Pro.

00:54:36 ◼   ► >> And at that, with the asterisk, we hope.

00:54:38 ◼   ► It will suit most people's needs, we hope.

00:54:40 ◼   ► >> Yeah, maybe they'll be wrong about that.

00:54:42 ◼   ► Maybe, you know, that's, again, with the process.

00:54:44 ◼   ► Like, wouldn't it be -- for all you know, Apple, if you made this kind of computer,

00:54:49 ◼   ► a whole new class of people would want to buy it.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Ignore the pro video people, because your real market is,

00:54:54 ◼   ► you know, like makers with their 3D printers,

00:54:57 ◼   ► and they need to do CAD on it.

00:54:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Like, that's kind of Apple's job to figure out.

00:55:01 ◼   ► But if your starting point is a more or less

00:55:06 ◼   ► conventional tower with a separate monitor

00:55:08 ◼   ► that's really nice and that has the same capabilities

00:55:11 ◼   ► and performance profiles as the iMac Pro,

00:55:12 ◼   ► but with more capacity,

00:55:14 ◼   ► that's a pretty good starting point for most people.

00:55:16 ◼   ► And then they can ask for things here and there.

00:55:20 ◼   ► But I don't think that that pro workflow team is going to do anything other than have minor

00:55:26 ◼   ► suggestions about a very conventional design.

00:55:32 ◼   ► And best case scenario, that team was able to dissuade Apple very early on, like last

00:55:37 ◼   ► year or sometime, to not make a weird octopus thing.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Right?

00:55:43 ◼   ► So don't go down that path.

00:55:44 ◼   ► "Would you have some sketches?"

00:55:46 ◼   ► I hope everyone involved would say,

00:55:48 ◼   ► "That might be good, it might be bad,

00:55:50 ◼   ► "but it's an unknown and you already did that

00:55:51 ◼   ► "with a trash can, so let's just reel this back in.

00:55:54 ◼   ► "Let's start with a box."

00:55:55 ◼   ► - I feel like too, there's different levels

00:55:59 ◼   ► at which this kind of user focus group

00:56:02 ◼   ► or work group is useful or needed.

00:56:06 ◼   ► It makes total sense to have people who use,

00:56:10 ◼   ► say, the Pro apps work with Apple on some level

00:56:14 ◼   ► and have Apple ask them what they need

00:56:16 ◼   ► and watch what they need and work closely with them

00:56:19 ◼   ► to tailor the Pro apps to the needs

00:56:22 ◼   ► of the people who buy them.

00:56:23 ◼   ► But as you go kind of further down, I guess, the stack

00:56:28 ◼   ► of the platforms, the operating systems,

00:56:31 ◼   ► and then eventually the hardware,

00:56:34 ◼   ► it gets less and less specific.

00:56:36 ◼   ► The whole appeal of personal computing

00:56:39 ◼   ► is that these machines are generalists.

00:56:42 ◼   ► they can be used to do anything.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Lots of different tasks can be done on these machines.

00:56:47 ◼   ► And so the hardware and the platforms and the OS

00:56:52 ◼   ► have to be able to support anything,

00:56:55 ◼   ► because you never know what people are going to do.

00:56:57 ◼   ► You can pick a few use cases and say,

00:57:00 ◼   ► "Let's make sure that it works well for these use cases,

00:57:02 ◼   ► "'cause we've heard that a lot of people

00:57:04 ◼   ► "use it for that," or something.

00:57:05 ◼   ► But you can never accommodate everything via user testing

00:57:09 ◼   ► that people are going to want these computers

00:57:11 ◼   ► and operating systems to do.

00:57:13 ◼   ► So as you go down, like, it, you know,

00:57:15 ◼   ► have the team that makes Final Cut work with video editors.

00:57:19 ◼   ► That makes total sense.

00:57:21 ◼   ► But even that is like kind of hard to describe.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Like, I guarantee you, no one on the Logic team

00:57:26 ◼   ► has ever watched somebody edit a podcast in Logic.

00:57:28 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:57:30 ◼   ► And maybe it's a pretty light use case, I don't know,

00:57:32 ◼   ► but I'm telling you, it's never happened.

00:57:33 ◼   ► But anyway, the OS and the hardware

00:57:36 ◼   ► have to be as versatile as possible.

00:57:40 ◼   ► So this is why this is kind of like a,

00:57:42 ◼   ► I don't think this has a lot to do with the Mac Pro.

00:57:45 ◼   ► Like this user, I think this is purely like a PR thing

00:57:47 ◼   ► to cover up, the information they wanted to communicate

00:57:50 ◼   ► was don't expect the Mac Pro this year,

00:57:53 ◼   ► and as John said, they gave you this

00:57:56 ◼   ► Pro Workflows group thing as something good

00:57:59 ◼   ► to stick on top of that, and that's nice,

00:58:01 ◼   ► but I don't think they're that related.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And the design of a Mac, any Mac, even,

00:58:08 ◼   ► I know a lot of people have been arguing about

00:58:10 ◼   ► the definition of pro.

00:58:11 ◼   ► What counts as a pro?

00:58:12 ◼   ► I think this is a totally useless distinction.

00:58:14 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Pro is marketing, that's all it is.

00:58:17 ◼   ► Pro just means the bigger one or the more expensive one.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Any other focusing of what this definition is

00:58:22 ◼   ► is not productive.

00:58:24 ◼   ► All of the computers in the lineup

00:58:26 ◼   ► should be as versatile as possible.

00:58:28 ◼   ► The OS and the platforms and everything

00:58:30 ◼   ► should be as versatile as possible

00:58:31 ◼   ► to accommodate any kind of work,

00:58:34 ◼   ► any kind of workflow, any kind of workload.

00:58:36 ◼   ► The only reason that you shouldn't be able to do something

00:58:39 ◼   ► on a MacBook Air that you can do on a Mac Pro

00:58:43 ◼   ► is if the MacBook Air doesn't have hardware support

00:58:47 ◼   ► for what you're doing, if it doesn't have enough RAM,

00:58:49 ◼   ► or if it's just too damn slow,

00:58:51 ◼   ► or if it doesn't have enough Thunderbolt bandwidth.

00:58:54 ◼   ► That should be the only difference between these products.

00:58:56 ◼   ► And when computers are properly designed,

00:58:58 ◼   ► which they have been for decades,

00:59:00 ◼   ► that is the only distinction.

00:59:02 ◼   ► For most types of applications,

00:59:03 ◼   ► unless there's a specific GPU requirement or something.

00:59:06 ◼   ► Like, you don't quote, "need" a MacBook Pro to edit video.

00:59:10 ◼   ► You can edit video in a MacBook Air.

00:59:13 ◼   ► It'll just be slower, and stuff like that.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Like, when you buy or if you sell computers,

00:59:17 ◼   ► you try to make these distinctions.

00:59:18 ◼   ► You try to say, "Oh, well, you need to go to this model

00:59:22 ◼   ► "if you need to do this."

00:59:23 ◼   ► Or, "If you're only doing this, you should only be using

00:59:25 ◼   ► "this cheapo, crappy model over here."

00:59:28 ◼   ► But these distinctions are all just for sales and marketing

00:59:30 ◼   ► and for the most part, the only thing that matters is,

00:59:32 ◼   ► Does it have the tech specs to do what you need at all?

00:59:35 ◼   ► And then you can argue about how fast.

00:59:38 ◼   ► To bring in user testing groups like this

00:59:41 ◼   ► to influence hardware decisions, I think is questionable.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Because for a long time, to the best of our knowledge,

00:59:51 ◼   ► these kinds of people being brought in

00:59:54 ◼   ► for hardware decisions were not necessary

00:59:57 ◼   ► or weren't happening.

00:59:59 ◼   ► And we still don't know that they're being used

01:00:00 ◼   ► for hardware today, but assuming that they are,

01:00:02 ◼   ► 'cause this was kind of weirdly tied to the Mac Pro

01:00:04 ◼   ► and this PR thing, they should just make

01:00:07 ◼   ► the kind of computer that has the most

01:00:09 ◼   ► you can possibly have in it for this role.

01:00:12 ◼   ► Like for the Mac Pro, it's a tower.

01:00:15 ◼   ► There's no limitations really on power consumption

01:00:18 ◼   ► or price or size.

01:00:21 ◼   ► So give it the most it can get.

01:00:23 ◼   ► When you're making a laptop,

01:00:24 ◼   ► you wanna have something that's portable,

01:00:26 ◼   ► presumably thin and light if you can get it there,

01:00:28 ◼   ► has good battery life, but other than that,

01:00:31 ◼   ► make it as versatile as possible.

01:00:33 ◼   ► This is an argument I always have with people

01:00:35 ◼   ► who are like, "Well, why do you need the SD card slot?

01:00:38 ◼   ► "I never used mine, so I'm glad they removed it."

01:00:40 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:00:42 ◼   ► These are versatile general purpose machines.

01:00:45 ◼   ► They should accommodate as much as possible.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Removing anything should not be considered a feature,

01:00:51 ◼   ► except weight.

01:00:52 ◼   ► That's the only thing that should be considered

01:00:54 ◼   ► a feature of removing.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Everything else, these should accommodate

01:00:58 ◼   ► as much as possible.

01:01:00 ◼   ► So to try to pick a few certain narrow use cases,

01:01:05 ◼   ► or a few certain industries, or types of quote pro users,

01:01:08 ◼   ► which is meaningless, to say like,

01:01:10 ◼   ► we're gonna optimize it, or we're gonna design it

01:01:13 ◼   ► to accommodate these things.

01:01:15 ◼   ► It makes like a spiky or peaky design,

01:01:19 ◼   ► instead of something that is more versatile,

01:01:21 ◼   ► that can accommodate a well-rounded group of things

01:01:23 ◼   ► people might wanna do with these computers.

01:01:26 ◼   ► The way to properly design computers is to cover

01:01:29 ◼   ► as much as possible, not as little as possible.

01:01:33 ◼   ► And this has been a design conflict

01:01:37 ◼   ► between me and Apple for a long time.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Well, for recent years especially.

01:01:43 ◼   ► I wish that the products we were getting out of Apple

01:01:45 ◼   ► were just more general purpose, more versatile.

01:01:49 ◼   ► The 2013 Mac Pro went in the other direction

01:01:53 ◼   ► and flopped miserably.

01:01:54 ◼   ► The 2013 Mac Pro is saying,

01:01:56 ◼   ► "Let's take all the different things people can do

01:01:57 ◼   ► "with the old Mac Pro towers."

01:01:59 ◼   ► so many different configurations possible

01:02:01 ◼   ► for so many different kinds of uses and priorities

01:02:03 ◼   ► and budgets and everything else.

01:02:05 ◼   ► And then they made this little trash can thing

01:02:08 ◼   ► that was optimized for like one use case

01:02:11 ◼   ► and one type of customer.

01:02:13 ◼   ► They replaced this incredibly versatile,

01:02:15 ◼   ► broad-reaching product with a very narrow one,

01:02:19 ◼   ► and it flopped.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I can make many parallels to the laptop lineup right now.

01:02:24 ◼   ► I hope that they have learned some lessons

01:02:29 ◼   ► from the 2013 Mac Pro and from the negative reactions

01:02:32 ◼   ► to the 2016 MacBook Pro, and I hope they're

01:02:36 ◼   ► gonna start giving us more broad products.

01:02:39 ◼   ► The iMac Pro is a pretty good start in that direction.

01:02:43 ◼   ► I wanna see more from the Mac Pro.

01:02:45 ◼   ► - So it really depends on how they're using these people,

01:02:47 ◼   ► 'cause they don't go into that much detail.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Like I said, I didn't even tell you when they were formed.

01:02:51 ◼   ► They just said, "Oh, they're right down the hall,

01:02:52 ◼   ► "and yes, they're influencing the Mac Pro,"

01:02:54 ◼   ► and so on and so forth, but I can think of lots of good

01:02:56 ◼   ► users of these people.

01:02:57 ◼   ► This gets to my point earlier about

01:02:58 ◼   ► It's Apple's job to make a good product.

01:03:01 ◼   ► The people they consult aren't making the product,

01:03:04 ◼   ► aren't dictating the product design.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Like they're just one input and you have to know

01:03:10 ◼   ► what input do you actually want from these people.

01:03:13 ◼   ► You don't want them to just go in there

01:03:15 ◼   ► with a blank sheet of paper and say,

01:03:16 ◼   ► "Here, pros, what kind of computer

01:03:17 ◼   ► "would you like us to build?"

01:03:18 ◼   ► And they all draw a picture of their home or car

01:03:20 ◼   ► and then you go, "Great, we'll build that."

01:03:21 ◼   ► And then you build it and it's terrible,

01:03:22 ◼   ► no one likes it and you can't figure out

01:03:23 ◼   ► what you did wrong.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And Apple's not doing that, I'm sure.

01:03:28 ◼   ► But there is valuable feedback to be harvested from them,

01:03:32 ◼   ► to your point Marco, to make a general purpose computer

01:03:35 ◼   ► that doesn't have stupid limits, right?

01:03:39 ◼   ► So to give some examples that might sound silly,

01:03:42 ◼   ► but I think is hopefully exactly the kind of feedback

01:03:45 ◼   ► they're getting from these people.

01:03:45 ◼   ► For the video editor examples,

01:03:46 ◼   ► I'm gonna make up stuff about video editing

01:03:48 ◼   ► 'cause I don't know anything about it, right?

01:03:49 ◼   ► But say the video editors say that they never put

01:03:53 ◼   ► their computers on their desk.

01:03:54 ◼   ► They always have it like underneath,

01:03:56 ◼   ► in like some standard cabinet or bay or something or whatever, right? And for it to be there,

01:04:03 ◼   ► the cords that connect from the monitor to the computer have to be some length. And they

01:04:08 ◼   ► could say, the last monitor you made, the cords are never long enough, so we have to

01:04:13 ◼   ► buy extenders and extenders are flaky. Or the, you know, the bus doesn't support cords of

01:04:19 ◼   ► that length and it's kind of annoying. And same deal with the input devices. Because

01:04:24 ◼   ► of the distances, if you just made all your chords like a foot longer, they would be so

01:04:28 ◼   ► much less frustrating.

01:04:30 ◼   ► That's valuable feedback, because it's just saying, "Look, this is how people like to

01:04:33 ◼   ► arrange their stuff.

01:04:35 ◼   ► It seems like a minor issue, but if we don't do this, if we make our chords the normal

01:04:39 ◼   ► length, it's going to be annoying to these people in the same way the 5-second long Final

01:04:44 ◼   ► Cut Pro windows is annoying.

01:04:45 ◼   ► Like they can get around it, the product is not dead on arrival, but it's a thing we wouldn't

01:04:51 ◼   ► have thought of if we hadn't talked to real people who use them in a certain situation,

01:04:56 ◼   ► and it's a thing we can do, it's not dictating the design of the computer, just make the

01:05:00 ◼   ► chords a little longer. I have to think that they had a similar type of reason for the

01:05:06 ◼   ► ridiculously long charger chord for the Apple Watch. You know, the chord for that thing

01:05:11 ◼   ► is like, well, sometimes the outlet is like behind the headboard of the bed in the middle,

01:05:16 ◼   ► and to reach the nightstand it has to be pretty darn long, and yeah, people can use an extension

01:05:20 ◼   ► but that's kind of annoying so we're just going to include a really long

01:05:25 ◼   ► cord stuff like that is exactly the kind of hardware feedback that you can get

01:05:33 ◼   ► without saying oh whatever hardware you need for your three specific specialties

01:05:40 ◼   ► we're just going to build something that does that and then leave someone out in

01:05:42 ◼   ► the cold who wants to do like MRI imaging it's like well I don't want to

01:05:44 ◼   ► but any of those people want I want something else entirely so they should

01:05:48 ◼   ► be making a general purpose flexible computer, but if they can, you know, to the goal of

01:05:54 ◼   ► accommodating more use cases is you have to talk to all sorts of people. These people

01:05:58 ◼   ► want a footlong record, these people don't want any lights in the front or you have to

01:06:01 ◼   ► be able to disable the lights. Stuff like that that you can just do, that when you look

01:06:06 ◼   ► at the whole computer, like, "Why are the cords so long and who cares about turning

01:06:10 ◼   ► off the lights? I certainly don't care about turning off the lights. And why does it have

01:06:12 ◼   ► like slots in front and in back? Or why are they on the side instead of over here?" And

01:06:17 ◼   ► It's like, you shrug your shoulder and say,

01:06:19 ◼   ► well, whatever, it's fine for me.

01:06:20 ◼   ► But to make a machine that accommodates

01:06:23 ◼   ► the most possible use cases,

01:06:25 ◼   ► that's worthwhile feedback on a hardware level.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Still, you don't want it to be the homer

01:06:29 ◼   ► and have everything that everybody wants

01:06:31 ◼   ► 'cause it stops being coherent at some point.

01:06:34 ◼   ► But that kind of feedback and the feedback

01:06:36 ◼   ► I mentioned before of like,

01:06:38 ◼   ► please don't make something that like is cooled by gel

01:06:42 ◼   ► and magnetically levitates and, you know,

01:06:45 ◼   ► is a bunch of boxes that snap together with magnets.

01:06:48 ◼   ► Like, we don't, nobody wants that.

01:06:50 ◼   ► Like, I know you think it's cool,

01:06:53 ◼   ► but I can say, we as professionals talk to everybody.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Talk to the video editors, talk to the audio editors,

01:06:57 ◼   ► talk to the scientific people, nobody wants that.

01:07:00 ◼   ► - And the people who think it's cool,

01:07:02 ◼   ► they're not the ones buying macros.

01:07:04 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:07:05 ◼   ► - They're the ones who are gonna complain

01:07:06 ◼   ► that they're too expensive.

01:07:07 ◼   ► - Right, and so I think that feedback

01:07:11 ◼   ► is good to get sent on the right path,

01:07:12 ◼   ► but after that, it's just a matter of finding out

01:07:15 ◼   ► all the little things that are easy for Apple to do that can go a long way. And that's perfect

01:07:21 ◼   ► for Apple to brag about in their presentations. And we learned that—again, I'm making up

01:07:25 ◼   ► all this stuff because I don't use them in this context—and we learned that in certain

01:07:28 ◼   ► studios people don't like to have lights. So if you want to turn off all the lights

01:07:31 ◼   ► on your thing, you turn them off and the audience would applaud if they also knew about this

01:07:35 ◼   ► whole light thing, right? That's the type of feedback I hope they're getting.

01:07:40 ◼   ► Is that it?

01:07:42 ◼   ► - For now.

01:07:43 ◼   ► - I don't know what to do.

01:07:46 ◼   ► - Don't worry, there'll be more.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Don't worry.

01:07:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I felt like they didn't actually release

01:07:50 ◼   ► that much new information.

01:07:51 ◼   ► So all we can do is speculate.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Oh, and I guess related to this,

01:07:57 ◼   ► I don't know how I got on this topic,

01:07:58 ◼   ► but I was wandering YouTube looking at fancy PC towers,

01:08:02 ◼   ► and there are some cool ones.

01:08:07 ◼   ► 'Cause this is sort of, I don't know,

01:08:10 ◼   ► Mac Pro methadone, right? I'm just I can't I don't have any news about a Mac Pro so I can just go look at other things

01:08:16 ◼   ► and say if the Mac Pro was like this it would be neat like I saw one recently that was a

01:08:20 ◼   ► Tower like a mini tower PC with no fans like passively cooled but with reasonably modern hardware in it

01:08:29 ◼   ► Like no fans. That is a certain appeal, doesn't it?

01:08:32 ◼   ► Right and you know, it obviously outperforms any Mac ever sold right because it's a PC

01:08:37 ◼   ► You know with it with the real video card and everything. It's not the fastest video card

01:08:42 ◼   ► You can get an into BC, but it was fast. I was like no fans really it wasn't even that big

01:08:47 ◼   ► It didn't even get that hot

01:08:49 ◼   ► I was like wow if Apple and this by the way Apple don't do this none of your pros are asking for no fans

01:08:54 ◼   ► But if if this was like an avenue of weirdness that they made like instead of making the trash can they instead decided

01:09:02 ◼   ► You know Steve job is still alive

01:09:04 ◼   ► This is the type of thing I can imagine him getting a bee in his butt about and saying,

01:09:07 ◼   ► "Let's try to make it with no fans."

01:09:09 ◼   ► He'd be like, "But Steve, nobody wants that, that—"

01:09:11 ◼   ► I said, "No fans."

01:09:12 ◼   ► Like, essentially, he did it with the original Macintosh.

01:09:14 ◼   ► The original Macintosh, by the way, had no fans in it, right?

01:09:17 ◼   ► And that's more difficult, and it got a little bit too hot inside there.

01:09:22 ◼   ► And they eventually put fans in the Macs.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Eventually they were like, "Steve, we kind of really need to put—"

01:09:26 ◼   ► I was like, "Fine, all right, fine, put fans in."

01:09:28 ◼   ► "Fine, make the RAM secretly expandable to 512 kilobytes.

01:09:30 ◼   ► I don't think you're ever going to need it."

01:09:32 ◼   ► Anyway, sometimes it's not great to listen to Steve Jobs.

01:09:34 ◼   ► But if they made a Mac Pro type thing where the design goal was

01:09:40 ◼   ► for no good reason to make it have no fans,

01:09:44 ◼   ► I think they could still make a good one.

01:09:46 ◼   ► It would be stupid.

01:09:47 ◼   ► It would be less flexible than having fans.

01:09:49 ◼   ► But put it this way, it would be better than a trash can.

01:09:51 ◼   ► You can make actually a pretty good conventional tower-looking

01:09:54 ◼   ► fanless thing that has much more flexibility than the trash

01:09:57 ◼   ► can, which is more of a condemnation than a trash can

01:10:00 ◼   ► endorsement for something that Apple could do.

01:10:02 ◼   ► Yeah, but to do it, it would have to be really big and really ugly things that Apple would

01:10:06 ◼   ► never do.

01:10:07 ◼   ► Not that big.

01:10:08 ◼   ► I'll send you a YouTube link.

01:10:10 ◼   ► It's smaller than a regular—it's way smaller than my cheese grater.

01:10:13 ◼   ► It's pretty amazing.

01:10:14 ◼   ► The amazing things you can do if you apply large amounts of metal and large amounts of

01:10:17 ◼   ► surface area.

01:10:19 ◼   ► So tell me—this is going to come across really snarky, and I don't mean it to—but

01:10:27 ◼   ► I do the same sort of thing that Marco does for a living.

01:10:31 ◼   ► And if you exclude gaming, I do the same sort of thing that Jon does for a living.

01:10:38 ◼   ► I can do my job on a MacBook, on a 15-inch MacBook Pro, on an iMac.

01:10:45 ◼   ► And I have done, and will continue to do, my job on any of those things.

01:10:51 ◼   ► There is no part of me that feels like I need or even really want a Mac Pro.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Because presumably if the iMac Pro is something like five grand, the Mac Pro is probably going

01:11:02 ◼   ► to be one and a half that, twice that, three times that.

01:11:07 ◼   ► I don't really understand why someone who writes code, the kind of code that the three

01:11:14 ◼   ► of us write anyway, why does one need a Mac Pro unless you want it to last 40 years?

01:11:22 ◼   ► And for Marco, you go through computers as quickly as you go through underwear, so that's

01:11:27 ◼   ► not a concern for you.

01:11:29 ◼   ► And I'll give you a cop-out, which I can't argue with, and it's that I am the most impatient

01:11:35 ◼   ► human alive, and damn it, I will wait as little time as possible for anything to happen on

01:11:39 ◼   ► my computer.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And that is, I don't personally think it's worth five or ten or whatever grand to be

01:11:46 ◼   ► that impatient, but you know, if you do, that's fine.

01:11:50 ◼   ► That's your math, that's your business, that's fine.

01:11:51 ◼   ► But do you know what I mean?

01:11:53 ◼   ► Like it seems kind of silly.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Like why does any of the three of us need a Mac Pro?

01:11:57 ◼   ► - Why do you need a fancy BMW to drive yourself to work?

01:12:00 ◼   ► You could take a moped.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Or you could walk.

01:12:03 ◼   ► - Walk would be a stretch.

01:12:06 ◼   ► A moped would probably end up with me dead.

01:12:08 ◼   ► The right answer you're looking for,

01:12:10 ◼   ► the right answer you're looking for is with a Chevy Volt.

01:12:12 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Or some other equivalent.

01:12:14 ◼   ► - Or just like the cheapest, you know,

01:12:15 ◼   ► you could get by with like, you know,

01:12:16 ◼   ► like the little like, you know,

01:12:18 ◼   ► the cheap little two-door, you know, Econobox.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Like, why do you have a nice car?

01:12:22 ◼   ► Why do you have a car that is fast?

01:12:25 ◼   ► As opposed to, you're like, you can still,

01:12:27 ◼   ► we're driving the same places, right?

01:12:29 ◼   ► - This car analogy definitely has some legs.

01:12:31 ◼   ► In fact, I'm looking-- - It has no legs,

01:12:33 ◼   ► it has wheels.

01:12:34 ◼   ► - I'm looking at an article right now from 2013

01:12:38 ◼   ► that has the picture of a beautiful matte finish LFA

01:12:41 ◼   ► at the top of it.

01:12:42 ◼   ► - Oh, here we go, I know exactly what you're talking about.

01:12:44 ◼   ► - Case for a true Mac Pro successor,

01:12:45 ◼   ► this is exactly the reason.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Because we're car guys, that's why.

01:12:48 ◼   ► That's why.

01:12:49 ◼   ► - Well, but I don't buy that, though.

01:12:50 ◼   ► I don't buy that.

01:12:51 ◼   ► - What don't you buy that?

01:12:52 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, it isn't a perfect analogy,

01:12:54 ◼   ► because there are certain capabilities

01:12:56 ◼   ► that higher-end computers offer you

01:12:59 ◼   ► that aren't necessarily always the case,

01:13:01 ◼   ► or always available on lower-end ones.

01:13:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was gonna say,

01:13:04 ◼   ► it's even more justifiable than the car thing.

01:13:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, but it's kinda like saying,

01:13:09 ◼   ► like, why get a pickup truck if you don't usually haul stuff?

01:13:14 ◼   ► But some people just like pickup trucks a lot,

01:13:16 ◼   ► and they get pleasure out of that,

01:13:18 ◼   ► fine, like who cares, right? And maybe sometimes they do occasionally have to haul stuff and

01:13:23 ◼   ► it wouldn't have fit in their Civic. Like buying more than you technically need is something

01:13:29 ◼   ► to consider if you're outfitting a business with 10,000 PCs. When you're an individual

01:13:34 ◼   ► who's a computer enthusiast and you have a little bit of extra money and you can buy

01:13:37 ◼   ► yourself a really nice computer, there's nothing wrong with buying more computer than you need.

01:13:43 ◼   ► we do the same job in a lot of ways.

01:13:47 ◼   ► And by the way, development is a very big and diverse field that many people have many

01:13:53 ◼   ► different needs.

01:13:54 ◼   ► And as I was spouting off on Twitter earlier about, I think the true developer computer

01:13:59 ◼   ► is the MacBook Pro.

01:14:01 ◼   ► Like the MacBook Pro is by far the more commonly used computer for developers than the Mac

01:14:05 ◼   ► Pro.

01:14:06 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is much more commonly used by non-developers for things like video farms

01:14:12 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:14:13 ◼   ► It's really not frequently used by software developers

01:14:16 ◼   ► in my knowledge and experience.

01:14:19 ◼   ► The MacBook Pro really is that.

01:14:22 ◼   ► But I could do my job on a MacBook Pro.

01:14:25 ◼   ► I have done my job on a MacBook Pro.

01:14:27 ◼   ► I spent years doing my job on MacBook Pros.

01:14:30 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:14:31 ◼   ► I'm happier and I think I'm more productive

01:14:34 ◼   ► and at least certain things are much faster

01:14:36 ◼   ► using my cool new iMac Pro.

01:14:38 ◼   ► Before this I used an iMac,

01:14:40 ◼   ► which is basically a MacBook Pro that's stationary,

01:14:43 ◼   ► that was also really great for years,

01:14:45 ◼   ► and that was good enough, but I can get a better one,

01:14:48 ◼   ► and I really, in the same way that you really value

01:14:51 ◼   ► having a nice, fast car, I really get a lot of pleasure

01:14:55 ◼   ► out of having a nice, fast Mac to do my work on.

01:14:58 ◼   ► We don't need any of these things in most senses.

01:15:02 ◼   ► We get them because some people really do need

01:15:05 ◼   ► the extra horsepower where if I was actually

01:15:08 ◼   ► encoding video all day and my encodes could be like four times faster than they could

01:15:14 ◼   ► on a MacBook Pro or on an iMac, a regular iMac, then yeah I think I could justifiably

01:15:18 ◼   ► say, you know, this is worth it to my job because it's saving a vast amount of time

01:15:23 ◼   ► throughout the day. For me the gain isn't that big between this and something a little

01:15:27 ◼   ► more pedestrian, but there is still a gain. Like every time I build and run in Xcode,

01:15:33 ◼   ► like I'm doing this a lot throughout the day and it is faster on this than it was on my

01:15:36 ◼   ► on my old iMac, not by hours faster,

01:15:39 ◼   ► it's not hours faster, but it's seconds faster,

01:15:41 ◼   ► and I do it a lot, so it's better.

01:15:43 ◼   ► This computer is able to do things,

01:15:46 ◼   ► basically anything I ask it to do, in near silence.

01:15:51 ◼   ► I have yet to hear the fan spin up.

01:15:53 ◼   ► I was maxing out all 10 cores the other day,

01:15:55 ◼   ► importing a big Lightroom import,

01:15:57 ◼   ► and I didn't hear the fans at all the entire time.

01:16:00 ◼   ► I have encoded video, I have encoded 4K video,

01:16:03 ◼   ► didn't hear the fans at all.

01:16:04 ◼   ► It's wonderful.

01:16:05 ◼   ► And so, none of us, or well, few of us,

01:16:09 ◼   ► actually quote, need these machines.

01:16:13 ◼   ► But, that's not to say there's not a market for them.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Just like nobody needs a car that can go zero to 60

01:16:19 ◼   ► in 2.5 seconds.

01:16:20 ◼   ► But there's a whole lot of people who would sure like one.

01:16:24 ◼   ► - I would go even further away from trying to justify it,

01:16:27 ◼   ► although there are definitely justifications.

01:16:29 ◼   ► Basically the same justifications as anybody

01:16:30 ◼   ► who uses a tool to do a job.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Like Parker was saying, you could edit video

01:16:33 ◼   ► a MacBook Air, but you're going to be miserable compared to if you had a bigger, faster computer

01:16:38 ◼   ► and if you do it for the living.

01:16:39 ◼   ► So anytime you do anything for the living, you want the best tools for it, even if it's

01:16:42 ◼   ► not a straight time is money thing.

01:16:43 ◼   ► So there is that justification.

01:16:45 ◼   ► But I think the more important thing, and the pitch I was trying to make in this old

01:16:49 ◼   ► article from before they introduced the trash can, was that it's important to the company

01:16:56 ◼   ► reach for this particular star.

01:16:59 ◼   ► To try to make the biggest, best, fastest, most powerful whatever.

01:17:07 ◼   ► They're doing that with the phone.

01:17:08 ◼   ► Every year they try to make the best, most powerful phone.

01:17:14 ◼   ► The iPhone X, it's not kind of like, "We think this is a pretty good phone.

01:17:19 ◼   ► It's kind of fast."

01:17:20 ◼   ► it's the best, fastest, coolest thing they know how to make with all the best specs.

01:17:26 ◼   ► It's better than everything, you know, they're always reaching for the stars there.

01:17:29 ◼   ► And that's a consumer product.

01:17:30 ◼   ► But for the pro stuff, it's, you know, the Hello Car analogy, right?

01:17:34 ◼   ► You're not going to make a lot of money from it, you're not going to sell a lot of them.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Most people don't need one, nobody needs one.

01:17:41 ◼   ► But having it exist, not even buying it, like, because I'm into cars, I buy Honda Accords,

01:17:47 ◼   ► right?

01:17:48 ◼   ► Just people knowing that it exists, that these cars are out there and that this is the company

01:17:55 ◼   ► that makes them raises the prestige of that company and is interesting from a sort of

01:18:02 ◼   ► human achievement perspective.

01:18:03 ◼   ► Yes, it's not the same as the space race, but it's similar.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Ferrari is out there making Ferraris, even if I never buy one.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Certainly I don't need one.

01:18:12 ◼   ► And even if I never buy one, I spend hours reading about them in magazines and looking

01:18:18 ◼   ► at them and get excited when I see one, and it changes my opinion of what cars can be.

01:18:25 ◼   ► And it gives me a different view of Ferrari than if they just made SUVs.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And Apple, I think, should always continue to push up against this envelope, regardless

01:18:37 ◼   ► of how many people buy it, just because for the same reason I use the Viper in the thing

01:18:42 ◼   ► because it was a direct quote from a magazine I'd been reading where the car guys wanted

01:18:45 ◼   ► to make the Viper because it's cool essentially and they're into cars and the people who deal

01:18:50 ◼   ► with the money are like, "Why would you ever make that?

01:18:52 ◼   ► It's a terrible idea.

01:18:53 ◼   ► It's not going to make you money and it's stupid and no one's going to buy one."

01:18:58 ◼   ► But that's bad decision making.

01:19:00 ◼   ► So again, your question Casey was, "Why do you want to get a Mac Pro?"

01:19:05 ◼   ► But I would take it even farther back and say, "Why do you care if a Mac Pro exists

01:19:08 ◼   ► if you're not going to buy one?"

01:19:10 ◼   ► And I do.

01:19:11 ◼   ► I care that for our existing though I'm never going to get one and I care that the Mac Pro

01:19:14 ◼   ► exist even if I wasn't gonna buy one but I totally am probably and I want Apple

01:19:20 ◼   ► to be reaching for the stars pushing the limits you know going farther and faster

01:19:27 ◼   ► than they've ever gone before and I want them to keep pushing that because I

01:19:31 ◼   ► think that an Apple that does that is an Apple that makes better products

01:19:36 ◼   ► overall yeah I don't debate that Apple needs to reach for this it's just again

01:19:42 ◼   ► like you neither of you has to answer to me and

01:19:45 ◼   ► You know, I'm not the boss of you and you can do it just because damn it

01:19:50 ◼   ► I want to and that's a perfectly acceptable reason but I look at my what is it like two-year-old iMac right now and

01:19:57 ◼   ► When I write code on this thing

01:19:59 ◼   ► Like the screen is beautiful with the exception of a little bit of burnin the screen is beautiful

01:20:04 ◼   ► It's still two years on feels crazy fast

01:20:08 ◼   ► Like I don't feel like I'm waiting for more than a moment for anything when it comes to development

01:20:13 ◼   ► And obviously if I'm doing trans codes or something like that, that's a different discussion

01:20:16 ◼   ► Yeah, occasionally the fans spin up, but I'm I'm okay with that

01:20:20 ◼   ► I know that makes me a monster, but I'm okay with hearing a fan from time to time

01:20:24 ◼   ► And I look at the iMac Pro and then I look at the Mac Pro and I feel like there are on

01:20:33 ◼   ► paper anyway

01:20:35 ◼   ► deeply diminishing returns for both. To me, it's like, yeah, okay, if you're gonna use the car

01:20:40 ◼   ► analogy, like, yes, I spent a bit more to have a nicer experience when I drive two miles to and

01:20:48 ◼   ► from work each day. 100%. And on the surface, it's not really that different from what either

01:20:54 ◼   ► you guys are talking about. But I feel like what we're, a more apt analogy is like, well,

01:21:01 ◼   ► Why did you get the regular Ferrari instead of the hyper lightweight Ferrari?

01:21:07 ◼   ► You know, like, or it's such diminishing returns. Why even bother? Or maybe a more apt analogy would be,

01:21:15 ◼   ► you know, a Hellcat will get you somewhere just as quick as a Ferrari will.

01:21:19 ◼   ► As long as there are no turns.

01:21:21 ◼   ► As long as there are no turns. But I mean, I guess this analogy is falling apart as well.

01:21:23 ◼   ► It's just, it seems like it's way more money to get you not that much more speed.

01:21:30 ◼   ► That's true of your BMW too, over my Accord.

01:21:33 ◼   ► Over your Accord it's considerably more speed over brand new Accords.

01:21:36 ◼   ► No, it's not.

01:21:37 ◼   ► Not proportional to the money.

01:21:39 ◼   ► It's always diminishing returns you get up to the top.

01:21:41 ◼   ► It's always.

01:21:42 ◼   ► By the way, if you're doing parallel tasks, it actually is that much more speed.

01:21:46 ◼   ► Yeah, don't go back to the practical justifications.

01:21:50 ◼   ► I think a totally impractical justification alone would be worth it, but there are in

01:21:54 ◼   ► fact actual practical justifications for it.

01:21:57 ◼   ► It's just, it's, again, like you don't have to answer me and I'll let it go.

01:22:00 ◼   ► It's just, it's really hard for me to understand why any human who lives in Xcode needs a MacPro.

01:22:06 ◼   ► Like, I can see Final Cut, I can see Lightroom.

01:22:08 ◼   ► Marco, you brought up Lightroom earlier.

01:22:10 ◼   ► I can make a pretty good argument that Lightroom could justify a MacPro, but for someone who

01:22:16 ◼   ► lives and breathes Xcode, or even more, like, you know, 90-year-old programming languages

01:22:22 ◼   ► like Perl, I don't get why one would want a MacPro.

01:22:27 ◼   ► And I'll let it go.

01:22:28 ◼   ► It's just, it's weird to me.

01:22:29 ◼   ► and Swift? Yeah. You should be dying for a Mac Pro. It's not that bad. It's not that

01:22:35 ◼   ► bad. I mean, the gaming angle that you mentioned before though actually is one of the more

01:22:38 ◼   ► relevant practical ones because if you really want a Mac, like, they force you to buy this

01:22:46 ◼   ► gigantic incredibly expensive thing just to get the good GPU. I mean, the Mac Pro is a

01:22:52 ◼   ► good GPU, but presumably this one will have a better one. And so if you really are stuck

01:22:55 ◼   ► on a Mac and you really want to play games on it, which people say, "Why would you

01:23:00 ◼   ► even want to just get a gaming PC?"

01:23:02 ◼   ► Blah, blah, blah.

01:23:05 ◼   ► We are oddballs who understand that.

01:23:07 ◼   ► We have to explain the practical reasons why people want them.

01:23:12 ◼   ► That's what all those pros are doing.

01:23:13 ◼   ► If you do it for a living and it will make whatever you're doing twice as fast or twice

01:23:17 ◼   ► as reliable at the same speed, then that's the reason to get them.

01:23:23 ◼   ► It's the reason professionals buy professional stuff, period.

01:23:26 ◼   ► Like, snap-on tools.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Why do they cost so much more than craftsmen?

01:23:28 ◼   ► Are they that much better?

01:23:29 ◼   ► No, they're not that much better, but they're better.

01:23:32 ◼   ► And if all you do all day is turn a wrench, get a good one.

01:23:35 ◼   ► Well, but on top of that, they also had a ridiculous warranty, did they not?

01:23:40 ◼   ► Craftsmen used to be guaranteed for life.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Guaranteed forever before Sears went out of business or whatever.

01:23:45 ◼   ► That's true.

01:23:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:23:47 ◼   ► I'll let it go, but it's an odd thing to me.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Again, I am 150% on board with Apple pursuing this.

01:23:53 ◼   ► I completely agree with you.

01:23:55 ◼   ► And again, gaming is a pretty good reason.

01:23:57 ◼   ► Because I friggin' want to, leave me alone, Casey is a good reason, which is what I'm

01:24:00 ◼   ► mostly hearing.

01:24:01 ◼   ► Lightroom is a good reason.

01:24:03 ◼   ► But if you're just living in Xcode or Terminal or Visual Studio Code or what have you, it

01:24:06 ◼   ► seems a little weird.

01:24:07 ◼   ► Well, I mean, this is my home computer, though.

01:24:08 ◼   ► I'm not getting it for work, you realize.

01:24:09 ◼   ► Like I would never be able to justify to work why they should get me a Mac Pro.

01:24:12 ◼   ► I can't even justify work for them to get me an iMac, for crying out loud, or just get

01:24:15 ◼   ► me a stupid laptop, right?

01:24:16 ◼   ► But for home, it's totally like, it's a hobby computer.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Like it's the same, you know.

01:24:21 ◼   ► If you had a taxi business, you're like, "How can you justify a BMW for your taxis?"

01:24:23 ◼   ► Like, "Don't.

01:24:24 ◼   ► It's going to break down and cost you too much money.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Like, get a Toyota for your taxi."

01:24:27 ◼   ► But for your home car, I get a BMW because I like cars.

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01:26:08 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:26:12 ◼   ► - Alright, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:26:14 ◼   ► We have a twofer with regard to evil addicting juice.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Bosemonkrief writes, "Hey Marco,

01:26:20 ◼   ► "what's your go-to hand grinder for those of us

01:26:22 ◼   ► "who don't want your fancy powered

01:26:23 ◼   ► "instant coffee tubes for travel?"

01:26:26 ◼   ► - Hand grinding, hmm, I've had two, both Hario.

01:26:30 ◼   ► First like the skinny one, I forget what it's called,

01:26:33 ◼   ► and then I later got the kind of stubbier one,

01:26:36 ◼   ► which is called the Skirtin.

01:26:38 ◼   ► I cannot recommend either of them really.

01:26:42 ◼   ► If you insist on hand grinding coffee,

01:26:45 ◼   ► the Hario Skirtin is the much better one.

01:26:48 ◼   ► The little skinnier one, it was useless.

01:26:51 ◼   ► It was very hard to get anything out of it.

01:26:53 ◼   ► The Skirtin is bulkier but substantially faster.

01:26:57 ◼   ► The problem is, there's a reason why coffee grinders

01:27:00 ◼   ► are all electric, because you need to do a lot

01:27:04 ◼   ► of hand cranking to really get a meaningful amount of coffee

01:27:07 ◼   ► especially if you're doing something

01:27:09 ◼   ► that needs a finer grind like an AeroPress.

01:27:12 ◼   ► This is one of the many reasons why I decided

01:27:15 ◼   ► after only like one or two tries

01:27:17 ◼   ► that travel copy setups are not for me.

01:27:21 ◼   ► So the only thing I can say is

01:27:23 ◼   ► please try not to do this at all,

01:27:26 ◼   ► but if you're going to do it,

01:27:28 ◼   ► the Hario Skurchen is the one to get.

01:27:30 ◼   ► - And additionally, Doggo Boy would like to know

01:27:33 ◼   ► what's your coffee setup like?

01:27:35 ◼   ► I just found out that you like coffee.

01:27:37 ◼   ► - How do you just find out that Marco likes coffee?

01:27:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, perfect.

01:27:40 ◼   ► - His blood is coffee at this point.

01:27:41 ◼   ► - It is alright.

01:27:42 ◼   ► - Anyway, I just found out you like coffee

01:27:43 ◼   ► and would like to know more about your setup.

01:27:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:27:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, alright, so basically I'm a crazy coffee enthusiast.

01:27:52 ◼   ► If you think I care a lot about MacBook keyboards,

01:27:55 ◼   ► you haven't seen me try to make or brew coffee.

01:27:59 ◼   ► I'm a home roaster.

01:28:00 ◼   ► I roast my own coffee on a hot top roaster.

01:28:05 ◼   ► I get the unroasted beans from Sweet Maria's.

01:28:08 ◼   ► I tend to get Kenya beans the vast majority of the time.

01:28:10 ◼   ► It's my favorite bean.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Sweet Maria's is the best resource I've ever seen

01:28:14 ◼   ► for not only getting unroasted beans,

01:28:17 ◼   ► but getting roasters and learning how to use them.

01:28:19 ◼   ► So I highly suggest SweetMaria's.com.

01:28:22 ◼   ► They've been doing this for a very long time,

01:28:24 ◼   ► and they've been wonderful.

01:28:25 ◼   ► And if you're going to start out on a coffee roaster,

01:28:27 ◼   ► you can start with a cheap Air Popper,

01:28:29 ◼   ► or the Baymore 1300, I think, or 1600.

01:28:33 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the one I had first.

01:28:35 ◼   ► It's decent.

01:28:36 ◼   ► The hot top is about three times the price,

01:28:39 ◼   ► but is three times better.

01:28:42 ◼   ► So it's up to you how you wanna deal with that.

01:28:44 ◼   ► But home roasting is something that nobody should really do,

01:28:49 ◼   ► but I do it, 'cause I care a lot about things

01:28:53 ◼   ► that most people don't care a lot about,

01:28:54 ◼   ► and I'm very happy with that, and I'm content with that.

01:28:56 ◼   ► So that being said, when I'm out, I mentioned last time

01:29:00 ◼   ► I've been recently trying these cool new Sudden Coffee,

01:29:04 ◼   ► instant coffee things, like when I'm traveling

01:29:06 ◼   ► or on an airplane or something.

01:29:08 ◼   ► Sudden Coffee is surprisingly good.

01:29:10 ◼   ► I also, in the meantime, have been recommended

01:29:12 ◼   ► two other ones, Wala, spelled like Viola,

01:29:16 ◼   ► you know, Wala Coffee, and Swift Cup Coffee,

01:29:19 ◼   ► both of which are also kind of pricey,

01:29:22 ◼   ► high-end instant coffee packets.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Both of them are good.

01:29:27 ◼   ► Swift Cup, I think, might be my favorite of all three.

01:29:30 ◼   ► so far. I have to try a little bit more of it, but I'm very impressed by the Swift cup

01:29:34 ◼   ► flavor. But sodden coffee is actually more practical because you can use the tube as

01:29:38 ◼   ► a stirrer, which is nice. Anyway, at home, when I'm using my home roasted beans, I grind

01:29:46 ◼   ► them with a Baratza Virtuoso and I put them in an AeroPress. And I use a fairly imprecise

01:29:53 ◼   ► inverted AeroPress method. And I use an electric kettle to pour hot water into it. That's about

01:29:59 ◼   ► - I love it, that's my coffee setup.

01:30:01 ◼   ► I pour, I press the coffee into a mug,

01:30:04 ◼   ► and then I drink it.

01:30:06 ◼   ► Usually I'm making coffee for me and TIFF at the same time,

01:30:09 ◼   ► so I use two AeroPresses in parallel, one in each hand,

01:30:13 ◼   ► and it's totally fine.

01:30:14 ◼   ► I've tried pretty much every way I know of to brew coffee.

01:30:19 ◼   ► I've tried French presses, drip pots,

01:30:24 ◼   ► good drip pots, bad drip pots.

01:30:26 ◼   ► - Butter.

01:30:27 ◼   ► I have tried the butter, that's terrible.

01:30:30 ◼   ► I have tried the, what's the big expense,

01:30:33 ◼   ► oh the Clover machine, I've tried the Clover machine

01:30:35 ◼   ► both at a real coffee shop and then later at Starbucks.

01:30:38 ◼   ► I've tried lots of different brew,

01:30:40 ◼   ► I've tried a vacuum brewer.

01:30:42 ◼   ► I have tried so many different ways to brew coffee.

01:30:44 ◼   ► And what it comes down to is the best way to brew

01:30:48 ◼   ► one cup of coffee or two if you're willing to operate

01:30:50 ◼   ► two in parallel is the AeroPress.

01:30:53 ◼   ► The best way to brew more than that is the Herio V60

01:30:56 ◼   ► pour over cone into whatever vessel you feel like.

01:30:59 ◼   ► That's it.

01:31:01 ◼   ► - All right, Bryce Minty would like to know,

01:31:03 ◼   ► "You know, I'm finally getting around

01:31:04 ◼   ► to replacing that awful Fios set-top box at my house.

01:31:07 ◼   ► Which TiVo are you using, Jon?

01:31:09 ◼   ► I'm not sure if the $750 for a new Bolt

01:31:11 ◼   ► in lifetime service is really worth it."

01:31:13 ◼   ► - Kind of like Apple's laptops,

01:31:16 ◼   ► TiVo line is not in a great place right now.

01:31:18 ◼   ► (Jon laughs)

01:31:20 ◼   ► All of their newest machines are using

01:31:23 ◼   ► this incredibly stupid bent box design, like it looks like a regular set-top box, I'd imagine

01:31:28 ◼   ► you bent it, like not even in the middle, so it makes this kind of like weird inverted

01:31:33 ◼   ► V shape.

01:31:35 ◼   ► The bend is stupid and you can't stack stuff on top of it, but worse than the bend, much

01:31:39 ◼   ► worse, is the fact that the thing is very small and so they have a, you know, low diameter

01:31:46 ◼   ► fan in it that has to spin very fast and makes a very annoying high-pitched noise.

01:31:50 ◼   ► So all of the bent box TiVo's are noisier than the much larger flat box TiVo's that

01:31:57 ◼   ► they replaced.

01:31:58 ◼   ► Which is a shame because the top end TiVo, the top end bent box TiVo, I have one that,

01:32:04 ◼   ► well, actually it's not a top end anymore now that I have that box thing, but I think

01:32:08 ◼   ► it's basically the same except for voice control.

01:32:10 ◼   ► They are otherwise very good.

01:32:13 ◼   ► They are fast, they're small.

01:32:17 ◼   ► The interface has not been entirely ruined by this new interface that they're trying

01:32:21 ◼   ► to roll out.

01:32:22 ◼   ► I still haven't gotten the new interface, which looks pretty gross, but the old one

01:32:25 ◼   ► is good.

01:32:26 ◼   ► Like, it is a good product, it is a good TiVo, except for the fact that the box is bent and

01:32:30 ◼   ► it makes lots of noise.

01:32:32 ◼   ► If you can find a Romeo Pro, which I also have one of, it is not quite as fancy as the

01:32:39 ◼   ► latest bent box ones, but it's still plenty fast.

01:32:41 ◼   ► It is way bigger, ridiculously bigger, which is kind of a shame, but it is quieter.

01:32:47 ◼   ► So there is no perfect TiVo to get.

01:32:50 ◼   ► I would say that if you have like an entertainment center

01:32:52 ◼   ► or someplace where you're not gonna hear the fan

01:32:54 ◼   ► or you don't care about fan noises or whatever,

01:32:57 ◼   ► then the stupid vent box, top of the line TiVos

01:33:00 ◼   ► are still pretty good TiVos.

01:33:01 ◼   ► But if you care about the noise or wanna save some money,

01:33:04 ◼   ► look into a Romeo Pro if you can find one

01:33:07 ◼   ► because they are much more conventional

01:33:09 ◼   ► and straightforward and flat and slightly quieter.

01:33:12 ◼   ► - Excellent.

01:33:13 ◼   ► And finally, KG writes,

01:33:15 ◼   ► What kind of clipboard management apps are you using, if any, on your Macs?

01:33:19 ◼   ► I use Alfred as my both app launcher as well as, you know, kind of do everything machine,

01:33:25 ◼   ► and it includes some very basic clipboard, like history and management and stuff like

01:33:29 ◼   ► that.

01:33:30 ◼   ► That has been great.

01:33:32 ◼   ► It is exactly what I want and nothing more.

01:33:36 ◼   ► And that has worked really well for me.

01:33:38 ◼   ► I did beta test PasteBot, which is by the same folks that do TweetBot and NetBot, RIP.

01:33:47 ◼   ► And that was really good, but more powerful than what I personally wanted.

01:33:53 ◼   ► It can do things like filter or modify what you've copied.

01:33:59 ◼   ► And maybe if I spent the time, I would end up deciding, "Oh, I actually really do like

01:34:02 ◼   ► this."

01:34:03 ◼   ► For my needs, it was overkill

01:34:06 ◼   ► for what I'm looking for from it.

01:34:08 ◼   ► Marco, do you have any sort of clipboard management setup?

01:34:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually really, really love clipboard management.

01:34:16 ◼   ► I came fairly late to it.

01:34:18 ◼   ► I think I was most of the way through my job at Tumblr

01:34:21 ◼   ► before I started using Clipboard Manager,

01:34:23 ◼   ► and I wish I had done it earlier once I got into it,

01:34:25 ◼   ► because programming and just general computer use,

01:34:28 ◼   ► there is a lot of opportunities to stack up

01:34:32 ◼   ► a couple things in the clipboard

01:34:33 ◼   ► and then paste them down somewhere.

01:34:35 ◼   ► It's the kind of thing like having multiple clipboards

01:34:38 ◼   ► or multiple levels to a stacked clipboard

01:34:41 ◼   ► is really, really nice in so many types of work on computers

01:34:46 ◼   ► and it's one of the biggest things that I think,

01:34:48 ◼   ► it's kind of a shame that iOS not only doesn't have it

01:34:50 ◼   ► but probably never will have it.

01:34:52 ◼   ► When you're working on iOS,

01:34:53 ◼   ► it's one of the biggest things I miss.

01:34:54 ◼   ► But I've tried a lot of them.

01:34:58 ◼   ► I think I've tried almost all of them.

01:35:00 ◼   ► I started out on one called Jumpcut

01:35:02 ◼   ► which was just a clipboard manager,

01:35:03 ◼   ► it was open source back forever ago,

01:35:05 ◼   ► I don't know where it is now.

01:35:07 ◼   ► And then I later moved on to Launch Bar.

01:35:11 ◼   ► And I've also, back in the day,

01:35:13 ◼   ► I used Quicksilver as my fast launcher,

01:35:15 ◼   ► then for a while I just did Spotlight as the launcher,

01:35:17 ◼   ► as an almost fast launcher,

01:35:20 ◼   ► and then Launch Bar kind of combines everything

01:35:22 ◼   ► into one app for me.

01:35:23 ◼   ► It is a super fast launcher

01:35:24 ◼   ► and also my favorite clipboard manager.

01:35:27 ◼   ► And I know Alfred, and there's a bunch of other ones

01:35:31 ◼   ► out there now, I'm sure they're all great.

01:35:33 ◼   ► Just Launch Bar happens to be the one that meshed best

01:35:36 ◼   ► with me and the way I like it to work and the way I like

01:35:40 ◼   ► it to look and behave and everything else.

01:35:41 ◼   ► So I use Launch Bar for that and kind of like what you said

01:35:45 ◼   ► Casey, I'm a heavy but shallow user of it.

01:35:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:35:51 ◼   ► - I use it constantly, I heavily use, I use the crap

01:35:55 ◼   ► out of it, but I only scrape the surface

01:35:58 ◼   ► of the available features.

01:36:00 ◼   ► I literally only use it to launch apps,

01:36:04 ◼   ► find emoji to paste into things,

01:36:06 ◼   ► which is a fairly recent thing,

01:36:08 ◼   ► and use multiple clipboards.

01:36:10 ◼   ► That's it.

01:36:10 ◼   ► I don't do anything where you can hit a different key

01:36:13 ◼   ► and send it to another workflow or send it to a script

01:36:15 ◼   ► or capitalize it in this way.

01:36:16 ◼   ► I don't do any of that.

01:36:17 ◼   ► It's only an app launcher and a clipboard manager for me.

01:36:22 ◼   ► Whatever it costs, I think it's like 40 or 50 bucks,

01:36:25 ◼   ► whatever it costs, it's totally worth it just for that

01:36:27 ◼   ► because it is such an incredible part of my workflow

01:36:31 ◼   ► doing pretty much everything

01:36:33 ◼   ► because of that clipboard manager.

01:36:34 ◼   ► It's so good.

01:36:35 ◼   ► That being said, if you don't wanna spend that much,

01:36:36 ◼   ► there are alternatives, as both of us said.

01:36:39 ◼   ► But I highly suggest,

01:36:41 ◼   ► whatever clipboard manager you end up with,

01:36:44 ◼   ► if you don't use one, try one.

01:36:47 ◼   ► If you do anything on a Mac ever, try a clipboard manager.

01:36:51 ◼   ► Because once you get into the habit,

01:36:53 ◼   ► it's like, so much of modern work is copying

01:36:56 ◼   ► and pasting stuff from one place to another.

01:36:58 ◼   ► And it's so nice to be able to copy three things

01:37:02 ◼   ► and then go to the other app and paste one,

01:37:05 ◼   ► paste two, paste three.

01:37:06 ◼   ► Like to not have to go back and forth so much,

01:37:09 ◼   ► it's such a revolution in how you use your clipboard.

01:37:13 ◼   ► You will wonder how anything ever doesn't use,

01:37:16 ◼   ► like how anyone gets around not using a clipboard.

01:37:19 ◼   ► It's almost as big of a change as having a clipboard

01:37:22 ◼   ► versus not having a clipboard.

01:37:23 ◼   ► Like the very first time you were,

01:37:25 ◼   ► like when we were all learning how to use computers,

01:37:28 ◼   ► that first time you discovered the clipboard